In Another Life
by electric gurrl
Summary: One moment Azula is drowning in the Forgetful Valley and the next she is opening her eyes twelve years into a horrifying future, in which she is married to her worst enemy, has two children she has never even met, and is one of Fire Lord Zuko's trusted advisors. This is an appropriate time to panic. — Azula x Ty Lee. Complete.
1. The Awakening

A/N: **Some Quick Facts About This Fic:  
Chapters: **21  
 **Pairing:** Azula x Ty Lee.  
 **Rated:** Soft M for moderate sexual content (only Tyzula), mild coarse language, violent references, potentially scary hallucinations and mature plot points.  
 **Notes:** This is a psychological thriller romance with all the usual plot devices and themes of the genre, but of course with a Tyzula Twist on them. It's wholly in Azula's POV, when I usually write in omniscient, so I'm more than open to any critique on how I handle that. I'm hoping for a story in which Azula's insanity, paranoia and ego make the psychological thriller aspect work.

* * *

 **In Another Life**

* * *

 _But if I know you, I know what you'll do_  
 _You'll love me at once, the way you did once upon a dream  
"Once Upon a Dream" - Sleeping Beauty_

* * *

 **Chapter One**

* * *

Azula wakes up gasping and clawing at the pitch black shadows above her.

She has to get to the surface. She _has to get to the surface_. Drowning; she cannot drown. She is drowning and she cannot drown.

But then she abruptly realizes that she is not underwater, although her skin is damp. Slowly, she sits up, her head splitting and her mouth tasting strongly of metal and dirt. She is in a bed, a particularly soft one, but she is not in her home.

She has to think, even though it hurts and the room around her is so dark. Moments ago, she was drowning in ice cold water. She could feel her lungs collapsing, and her desire to just give in, suddenly replaced by the need to _fight_. Trying to drown herself was a mistake, and she thought she had realized it too late when she blacked out.

Her eyes do not adjust fast enough, and so she lights her palm and tries to illuminate the room. She _does_ recognize it, and she has to hold back a scream. Hospital, filled with healers and smelling of herbs and oils and ointments and blood. Not the one she was last in, thankfully. The one she has been to once or twice when training injuries as a young girl, and once when she had a horrible infection and fever.

She is trying not to panic as she knows that Zuko must have fished her out, must have saved her. But she has no memory of being taken all the way from the Forgetful Valley to Caldera. If he revived her from drowning, she would have come to at some point, wouldn't she have?

She lights up the room and sees that she is completely alone, and not restrained or locked in. Now the panic grips her, because something is very amiss about that treatment. She reaches around herself and her body gives no clue as to why she is not in chains or a straitjacket or lethargic from drugs, but she does suddenly realize that she does not feel the same as she did before. Her bones stick out less, her body has lost the signs of her time decaying and rotting in an asylum. It is as she is feeling up her own chest and trying to control her breathing that the door suddenly opens.

"Princess," a stunned voice says and Azula quickly removes her hands from her shirt. The healer lights the lamps in the room and the glow is dim enough not to hurt Azula's eyes. "You're awake. I'll inform your family right away."

"What? I..." Azula just swallows.

If her mother walks into this room, Azula is going to start burning everything and running. If Zuko walks in, she might do the same. She realizes that she is in soft cotton robes, light pink. Azula is suddenly gripped by the jarring image of her clothes becoming too heavy, the very light armor weighing her down as she tried and tried to reach the surface.

She thought she could not take it, that she could not take living a life trapped in the past with no future. Azula remembers sobbing those jumbled words to herself, gripped by unwelcome hallucinations, before aiming to crush herself on a rock and then slip into the bright blue water.

Azula is torn from her reverie when someone walks in. The figure is impossible to make out properly, since something is in their arms. Then Azula's eyebrow twitches as she sees a traitor, a traitor clutching a child. Probably got herself knocked up and didn't even bother.

Another fast and jarring memory. Looking up, bangs across her forehead. Looking up at the one person she had thought she could trust, but who clearly never was allegiant to Azula.

"You're awake," Ty Lee says with a strange sigh of relief. She looks different from when Azula last saw her. And not just the lack of the make-up and the clothes that branded her a treasonous backstabber. Older, even more attractive, Azula is loath to admit.

Ty Lee throws her arms around Azula, the little child pressing against her briefly before Azula pushes her away as hard as she can.

The expression on Ty Lee's face is rather pleasing. Stunned, hurt, just like a chi-blocked broken princess on the floor.

"What gives you any right to touch me?" Azula snarls and the healer looks concerned. Ty Lee just clutches the little peasant brat closer to her.

"I don't understand." Ty Lee is addressing the healer as Azula breathes in rattling, panicked, suffocating breaths. "What's happened?"

The healer frowns. "She's just disoriented." The stranger turns to Azula. "Would you like something to calm you down?"

"No. I'm not letting you people poison me," Azula says, forcing herself out of the bed. Her legs slip slightly under her, but she manages to keep herself upright. "Release me. Give me a trial before you let my brother lock me up again for my own good."

Ty Lee looks baffled, but Azula does not care. The healer's confused expression is of much more interest to the panicking princess.

"I can have you discharged immediately," the healer says slowly and Azula has to imagine Zuko would only order that if he had something nasty planned for her. "But you should really sit down."

Azula does the opposite. She stands straighter and lights both of her fists. "You both should stand down and let me out of here. I ran for a reason."

"You didn't run," Ty Lee says and Azula scoffs. It isn't as if she was there. "You came here last night after you passed out and ─ I didn't see her hit her head or anything. What do you think you last did?"

"Again, what gives you the right to even look me in the eye?" Azula snaps airily, trying to remain composed and threatening. But she just feels like she is going to be sick.

Ty Lee opens her mouth, looking like she is going to shout. But then she seems to change her mind. "What's the last thing you remember?"

"Drowning," Azula says as she looks for a more efficient and unpredictable exit than the main door. "I was drowning because I threw myself into a lake in hopes of dying. Who saved me? The Avatar? My brother?"

"I'm really confused," Ty Lee says as the healer moves to touch Princess Azula.

Azula takes only a brief moment to wonder why she did not wake up in restraints, and why the door and windows are unlocked, before bolting for the window, aimlessly throwing fire behind her to slow down anyone who would pursue her.

She stops, panting, wondering when and how she got so out of shape. Is she in a coma? Please let her have just woken from a coma. Everything looks different; her home city is strange and alien. The shops are not the same, the paint has changed on two buildings, benches and trees where propaganda and ashes once stood.

"Slow down," says a man dressed in gold and red armor and Azula wields two hands of fire.

"You aren't taking me." She steps backwards and bumps into another. Azula cannot believe she let herself get cornered like some kind of novice or idiot.

"Did someone attempt to harm you?" asks the guard in front of her and Azula feels faint.

"I am the one attempting to harm everyone," Azula stammers, but she can tell from their expressions that this is not at all the world Azula is used to living in.

"She's probably just disoriented," says a confident male voice as Azula begins to notice the people staring from the sidewalks.

Zuko. Oh no. Not Zuko. But Azula does not move, in fact, she lowers her flames and lets them fade slightly. He will have answers; in fact, this is probably his doing.

"I am not disoriented. I…" Azula stares at her feet. And then she forces herself to look up at Zuko, and wonder how he looks so different. "I want a trial."

"For what?" Zuko looks so _concerned_ and it makes her want to burn off the rest of his face. But she calms her breathing.

 _One, two, three, four…_

 _One, two, three, four…_

"How did you find me?"

"You passed out last night. It wasn't that hard to find you in our home." Zuko frowns and someone else strides up behind her.

"Is it the Sleazy Traitors Reunion Day at the Pale and Sullen Café?" Azula snaps and Mai squints.

"What year is it, Azula?" Mai asks calmly as Zuko is still looking worried and confused.

"102 AG."

"That was a dart in the dark," Mai remarks, looking mildly proud of herself, as Zuko grimaces. "What do you think happened to you?"

"Clearly I am being tortured by spirits in some kind of disturbing afterlife. I drowned. I drowned myself and I shouldn't be here and why is that shop a different color?" Azula says quickly, now sliding to the ground as the guard's hands are grasping at thin air.

"Please come sit down with us at the hospital, and we can sort this out," Mai states slowly, the opposite of Azula at the current moment. "You have nothing to lose in that scenario."

"When did you two even get back together?" Azula snarls as she pushes herself up, the gravel scratching against the palm of her hand. It is fresh and feels _wrong_. This city _smells wrong_ and Azula has never felt so lost in her life.

She should be displaying strength and willpower right now, but she cannot. She should be looking for an escape plan, but she can only stare forward until she sits down in the waiting room painted and upholstered in warm tones and smelling of lavender incense.

"You didn't drown," Zuko says as he sits across from her, holding up a hand to stop the guard from pulling the chair out for him.

"Well, _clearly I can see that_."

"You have just had some kind of mental break."

" _What new information_! So, when are you going to lock me away like an embarrassing mistake again?" Azula spits and Zuko sighs. She cannot understand why he is not enraged yet, and why he looks concerned but calm and mature.

"You are very safe right now. No one has even thought about that in years since you recovered of your own volition. I mean, you're well respected and an advisor to the Fire Lord..." Zuko trails off when he watches her expression contort. Azula is grateful for that, because she feels as if she is going to vomit, and she can also see that, at last, Zuko looks reasonably frightened.

They are interrupted by light footsteps entering. Ty Lee again, and Azula stares at her, noticing the child is still pressed against her. She flaunts her betrayal and it makes Azula reconsider polite conversation with Zuko and Mai.

"Is she okay? I haven't seen her do something so reckless since that time she jumped off of the balcony to stop that assassin…" Ty Lee inquires softly, her light pink lips barely moving with her words.

"When did that happen?" Azula demands, still refusing to look at Ty Lee.

"Zuko's Solstice Speech before Kazumi was ─ She has no idea what I'm talking about," Ty Lee says, her casual tone turning into one of great concern. "Did she hit her head? I didn't see her hit her head."

Azula is too shocked to even breathe. This is surreal, much more surreal than the definite feeling of water encasing her. She _knew_ she was drowning, and the only way this could be remotely real is if it is some kind of Spirit World joke.

"What year is it really?" Azula asks quietly, still struggling to maintain her breathing pattern.

"114 AG," Mai says easily, clearly the only person in this room not terrified and alarmed by what is happening. "And maybe we should take this slowly, so as not to give you a heart attack."

Azula nods. Despite hating the idea of agreeing with Mai so strongly, she thinks she will need to play by the rules of this reality if she is going to survive. If it is Spirit World magic, which it likely is, there is probably some way to get back to her own world.

As unsavory and dreadful as it was to be locked in an asylum and disgraced eternally, she somehow prefers the inferno she knows.

"How long have I been your prisoner?" Azula whispers and her former friends all look at each other with uncertain expressions. " _How long_?"

"Never," Mai suggests and Azula inhales sharply. Perhaps this is an alternate reality, one in which things went differently.

"But I ran away," Azula says sharply. "And then drowned myself."

"We found you two weeks later," Zuko replies, clearly neglecting the fact that he is _wrong_ and Azula knows much better what happened to her. "You were a mess, but you were never a prisoner."

"That's what they always said in the asylum. Lies. You are all liars, clearly, because I would never come willingly, and I would certainly never let myself waste away for twelve years! I am better than that…" Azula is feeling extremely fuzzy now.

Azula breathes in very slowly as Zuko decides to take action. "So long as you promise not to murder anyone, you can see if going home and looking at your current, errr, future, life, makes you feel any more comfortable."

Slowly, Azula nods. She is too tired to protest much.

[X]

The palace is different as well, and Azula has yet to figure out if this is an alternate world or simply time travel or a _test of character_. Surely something must explain it eventually, if she cannot figure it out herself.

"So, do you remember the palace?" Zuko asks after becoming too uncomfortable with Azula's bitter silence.

"I don't have amnesia," Azula snaps. "But the new paint is… tolerable."

Zuko looks disconcerted by Azula calling things _new_ when evidently he has been living in this world for a very long time. Perhaps it would be wise if Azula pretends that she just had a mental break ─ or did she never go crazy in this life? She needs more information, but her insistence that this is Spirit World meddling is met with concerned looks on the faces of traitors.

"Did I go crazy? In the past?"

"That's a harsh phrasing…"

"It is not. Did you lock me in an asylum? Which of course drove me to drown myself."

"Yes. That happened. Should I reiterate our history? From when? I'm really confused right now."

"The feeling is mutual. We should discuss things ─"

She is interrupted by something colliding with her gut. In response, she screams and lights her hand, the blue flame bursting bright red and toasting the wall beside her. But it was not an attack; it is a small child.

"Let go, little child creature," Azula says quietly, trying to pry it off of her. "Is that real?"

 _Probably not real because this alternate reality is absolutely a hallucination._

Azula ignores Zuko's worried expression, and takes a deep breath. She imagines that _of course_ spirits would force her to confront a _daughter_. Given the fact that one of the many reasons she was trying to drown herself was because of her mother. And, therefore, to play along with this sick game, Azula kneels down and looks at her eyes.

 _Oh, spirits, what is wrong with her eyes? They look like mine._

"What's your name?" Azula asks softly, hating how no one ever taught her how to talk to children.

The little girl looks nervous, glancing up at Zuko.

Azula's heart pounds. Maybe this is a trap; that is even more frightening. Yes, he and his cronies fished her out of the water and are now trying to trick her into thinking she is on their side. But, Agni, the little girl does look just like Azula.

Zuko says hesitantly, "She lost some of her memories when she fainted, and she's still figuring it out."

The little girl does seem to accept that, and she looks up at Azula. The princess has to avert her eyes, because it looks like peering into a mirror of her faults, failings and fears.

"I'm Azusami," she says sweetly, and she takes Azula's hand. Their skin is so similar, the lusted after royal ivory. Azula only now notices that her nails look different, and so do her hands. No, trick of her mind, of course.

"Right. Who's your father?" _So help her if someone says Avatar Aang…_

"Uhm…"

"So I don't know."

Zuko makes a groaning noise, and to his good fortune, Mai maneuvers her way into the situation.

"Azula, you married Ty Lee. I'm sorry," she says bluntly and Azula hates just how believable that is. "Zuko, I know you've spent a long time unlearning speaking without thinking through consequences, but you're probably making this worse by overthinking it."

"ZuZu, _over_ thinking," Azula attempts feebly, and then her heart starts to pound. That did not come off right.

"Come see my toys," orders Azusami, who now wears a scowl that Azula can tell is because the attention is off of her now. Azula is frozen, yet again, and so Azusami tugs more forcefully. "Mother."

Azula recoils abruptly and then realizes she has clearly hurt and upset the child which immediately leads to her hyperventilating. Zuko grabs her arm and she pushes him away forcefully. Mai reaches out and Azula dodges her, backing away as quickly as she can.

"I can't do this. I can't do this," she keeps repeating, although she thinks she is only mouthing the words by the time she reaches the end of the shadowy corridor.

"It's not your fault," Zuko says quietly to the wide-eyed and horrified little girl. And then he turns to the equally horrified young woman. "Azula, please, don't run away; you don't have to do anything you don't want to do."

She has no words. And all Azula has left are words. Even her violent acts are meaningless without her silver tongue, and she feels her knees becoming weak.

"Somebody catch her," Mai says without moving, and Azula thinks she feels Zuko's arms before blacking out.

[X]

Azula looks up into the haze above her. She begins to hope that perhaps it was a nightmare, or a strong hallucination. Her skin is quite cold, but she is in a bed and can smell herbs. They saved her from the water, and now she is recovering.

And honestly, if that dream was to teach her some spirit lesson about how she needs to control her own life and not just resign to fate, she learned it. She opens her eyes and looks around her bedroom.

It is slightly different, but she imagines things were changed once she was tossed into an asylum. Again, like in her dream, she does not have any restraints on her. Perhaps they thought sedatives would last longer, and Azula has lucked out.

 _Or maybe it is a trap. It very well might be._

Warily, and with her fingers poised for attack, she walks towards the bathroom, finding an odd array of toiletries that unnerve her. No one should be living in her bedroom after she was forced into a fancy cell that they denied being a cage to attempt to make her _feel better_.

She runs the water, cold against her hands. Her mind flashes again to how vivid drowning was, and she quickly shuts it off and yanks a towel from the wall to dry her hands. It will do her no good to think about that now, but she tends to have no control over her thoughts, even before she lost everything.

Azula lights the lanterns with smooth cerulean flames that lick the air. She has control with her bending, and then she grits her teeth. Marrying Ty Lee was a very sick addition to her hallucination; she is the only person who can steal everything about Azula.

Her ability to manipulate. Because, Agni, was their flirting a mess.

Her mind. Because, Agni, Azula was holding herself together perfectly fine until that girl betrayed her.

Her bending. Because, Agni, Azula's most permanent and forceful memories of Ty Lee are not pleasant ones of kisses and electrifying touches; they are of being broken by her.

She then makes the horrific mistake of looking into the mirror. Not anything worth panicking over at all… Azula tries to remember how to slow her breath and circumvent tachycardia but she cannot when she is looking at blatant evidence of her nightmare not being over.

Her fingers brush across her face. She is even more beautiful, and Azula supposes she would be angrier if she was hideous or scarred like Zuko, but she is definitely not barely pushing sixteen. And she does not have the perpetual dark circles, or the signs of forced starvation. She does however, still have scars, but they have faded.

This doesn't just… _happen_. Azula has seen stranger things, she knows, but this does not feel like her invention.

But _what is real_? She does not know anymore and she has not known for a long time.

"Are you okay?" says a girlish voice behind Azula and she screams, gripping the sink so tightly she thinks either the basin or her hands will break.

"You can't just walk in uninvited," Azula snarls, her heart pounding as she manages to peel her eyes away from the mirror and look at Ty Lee.

"I… I'm guessing you still are having side-effects," Ty Lee says and Azula closes her eyes and pretends to accept what they are telling her. "It will work out. We have been through way worse."

"I need to be alone for a few more minutes," Azula states regally and she feels relief in her chest. She still does have power, if she can manage to acknowledge it.

"Of course. Just let me grab my toothbrush and a hair ribbon," Ty Lee says brightly, as if there is no poison between them.

Azula does, however, not need to make any enemies in this, at least until she figures out the purpose of this frightening reality. She thought it just was shock, or maybe it even was a vision of the future due to the spirit water. But this is so real. _So real_.

Ty Lee leaves once she has collected her belongings and Azula closes the door before stripping off the fresh, soft robes that someone put on her. She pulls up her hair, which is longer. Her bangs are no longer in existence, and she has to run her hands through her hair multiple times to even fathom the loss.

She then examines her body. Burn marks are still there in the shape of a hand, but Azula has never expected that to fade. Her breasts look vaguely different but she has not intently studied herself since during the war. During the only time she was happy.

If the spirits wanted to send her somewhere to right her wrongs, why would they choose the _future_ instead of the _past_? It seems ridiculous and goes against all convention.

She turns, and is relieved to see muscle in both her arms and abdomen. Azula can hold herself up in a fight if this turns sour. But her hands immediately fly to new markings.

Faint stretch marks. Azula hears the child calling her _mother_ and takes a fast, rattling breath through her mouth. She neglects the water, even though she longs for it, and puts her clothes back on.

When Azula leaves the bathroom, she decides to think of it as entering a strategic and covert mission. They _are_ her enemies, after all, and Azula is trained in this, in case she would be captured or lost. She runs her hands through her hair again, again shocked by what is missing. But, no, she has to focus.

The Spirits put her here, presumably to make her face a demon, or to test her worthiness. There are a plethora of legends about such things. Azula does not think, however, that she will make much progress in the dead of the night without arousing suspicion, and so she walks to the bed and decides to play the weak and complacent prisoner.

It is not her style, but she thinks it will be for the best this time.

[X]

Azula is trying to fall asleep, despite her surging pulse, when Ty Lee reenters as if she owns the room. Ty Lee gives Azula a brief glance before moving towards the armoire.

"You don't mind if I get undressed in front of you?" Ty Lee looks puzzled by the situation. "Well I guess you have… I guess you've… uhm…"

"We have had sex," Azula says sharply and immediately regrets it. But Ty Lee looks like she was about to keep making those noises.

"I have no idea how far you remember. Is it just fuzzy?" Ty Lee asks and Azula shifts her gaze away from the tarnished golden vents on the lower wall.

She regrets that, because her eyes briefly fixate on places she should have forgotten, or vilified.

"I am fine," Azula says slowly, leaning back and noticing that Ty Lee does not care about Azula's eyes not leaving her body as she changes.

Ty Lee sits down. "I'll give you space. But, Azula, this is real."

"W-what?" Azula turns to her, and rips her mind from the quiet examination of the sheer robe over very bare skin. "Why would this…?"

"It's been a long time, but I just thought maybe you think this is not real. But it's real. I promise," Ty Lee says softly before entering Azula's sheets uninvited.

The promises of a traitor mean nothing, and the phrasing of _real_ makes Azula concerned that this is sinister. That perhaps she is right, and these are not the people she once knew, but are ghosts of them that her mind has created.

Azula does not want to fall asleep, but she is much too tired to remain awake. She wraps herself in blankets that are unfamiliar and do not have the scent of her old perfume. And she stares at the ceiling, hoping for some kind of answer.

She will get out of this life and back into her _real_ one.

Although, Azula cannot help but think, it can't hurt to try this world out for a while. Perhaps it is not punishment, but providence.

No, no, it is a trick or trap.

Her wife, however, is extremely distracting.


	2. The Puzzle

**Chapter Two: The Puzzle  
**

* * *

Azula wakes up feeling blissfully unaware.

But when she opens her eyes, she feels the crash of a strange and disoriented sensation. It feels like the first night sleeping in a new home, or at a friend's house; there is incredible confusion during the brief moment between sleep and wakefulness. When Azula expects to be somewhere else, somewhere familiar.

 _Would I really take the asylum over this place? No, no, no. Of course not._

This world, this strange house and the blankets of a different shade are all alien to her. She has no idea what the _reason_ is, but she thinks it must be some kind of puzzle set up by the spirits. The fact that they think Azula needs _redeeming_ is absurd. Princess Azula will not change for anyone, and she will not apologize for the way she lives her life.

But here, in this world, she is the outsider. The stranger in a strange land, despite spending her life never being _behind_ or confused. Azula has always been five steps ahead until she trips over her own ego, but now, she does not even know which direction she is supposed to be walking in.

The only thing that is the same here is the sun pouring through her window.

And even the window seems to have been replaced with new glass.

Azula turns onto her side, still distracted by the empowering sensation of sunlight, and muffles her sound of shock with her hand. Ty Lee does not stir, and then Azula suddenly remembers the other part of her new life that is nowhere _near_ idyllic. She is _married_ to Ty Lee. Ty Lee, whom last Azula remembered, she was still angered, hurt by and would have taken great pleasure in destroying her.

Why shouldn't Azula hate her? Ty Lee did the worst thing to Azula that anyone can possibly inflict.

She let her believe that she was loved and wanted, and then revealed that it was all a sham.

And now? Now Azula is supposed to be her _loving_ wife?

Waking up married to your enemy, the person who wrecked you and then left you in ashes, is predictably unpleasant. Azula cannot even describe the sensations to herself, because she is so repulsed by what she is dealing with. Do people even do this? Has anyone ever done this or felt this way?

Well, no, most people aren't given a second chance after trying to kill themselves in spirit water. There is no way to possibly connect the dots that could have led Azula to marry Ty Lee and have two children with her. It just makes her feel monumentally dizzy.

Perhaps she should just run. Quietly get dressed and head towards the sunrise without looking back. But that appealing thought is snuffed out when she feels her new wife sit up beside her.

"Azula," Ty Lee murmurs and the princess feels every muscle in her body tense in sick anticipation. The woman beside her, who does look just like the girl she once knew, has just woken with a bright and hopeful expression. "Are you feeling any better today?"

She of course means, _Do you have your memories back?_

"No," Azula admits coldly and remorselessly, sitting slowly and looking again at the sun. It fills her with strength yes, but it also assures her that there must be a few things that have not changed beyond recognition.

Ty Lee touches Azula's waist and the princess desperately hates that she likes the shiver it sends through her. However, she does not know if this is sickeningly wrong. She might be in the body of a woman in this life, but she does not belong in it.

She might look like Ty Lee's dear wife, but Azula cannot help but think of her as a traitor and enemy. Azula's favorite enemy, because she did happen to love her once. And maybe she loved her still and that was why she hates the fact that she is married to her with such virulence.

Azula does not want to pull away, and she finds herself leaning into it ever so slightly. Ty Lee clearly seems to think that is progress because her first instinct is to press her lips against Azula's, sending a surge of panic into her chest.

There is a hormonal, natural and desiring part of her that reacts with pleasure instead of panic, but the other part of Azula pushes away from Ty Lee as hard as she possibly can.

"I'm sorry," Ty Lee says softly and Azula _hates it_. She wants Ty Lee to be angry; she wants Ty Lee to prove her right. "Clearly this... clearly this is a little more worrying than a fever."

Azula opens her mouth to shout yet again that this is an insane spirit trick. How could they not easily believe that after everything that they have seen? But Azula knows that they will think that she is completely crazy.

"I just need someone to walk me through my day. Can you do that?" It kills Azula to ask her for help, and to put her trust in Ty Lee, but she has no other choice at this point.

Ty Lee nods and stretches. "It shouldn't be a problem at all."

Azula runs her fingers through her hair and stands up to get dressed. She winds up staring at herself in the mirror for much, much longer than anyone should. But she still is far from used to this body and how odd it feels to be inside of it. She is so beautiful, actually. Azula is so beautiful, and she is so glad to see how little she looks like her mother.

Sudden, sharp realization, and Azula drops the toothbrush she was picking up with a _click_ against the stone floor.

"What is it?" Ty Lee asks loudly, scrambling out of bed.

"I am married to _you_ , and apparently friends with _Mai_ and working for my _brother_. Please, please don't tell me that I've reconciled with my mother. She doesn't deserve that. Tell me that Zuko woke up and realized how she betrayed us!" Azula shouts, not even thinking about how loud and insane she sounds.

Ty Lee laughs and Azula wants to strangle her.

"No. You never reconciled with your mother. She hasn't even met Kazumi." Azula pauses; she is rather unsure who that is. "Oh, uh... wow. Kazumi is our youngest daughter."

Azula hesitates, not even trying to accept that information. She lets it roll off of her and disappear like drops of water on smooth glass.

After Ty Lee stops staring, and Azula is glad to know that she isn't close with her mother, her panic has subsided. But the surreal and perturbing sensation of the world she is in does not go away so easily. She just finds clothes that are all new and strange to her, and tries to figure out what to do with her changed hair, her fingers fumbling again and again.

"Well," Ty Lee says warmly, "are you ready to be walked through a day in the life of Princess Azula?"

 _No_. "Yes," Azula responds and she ignores Ty Lee attempting to take her hand.

Or maybe she should hold hands, maybe Azula should attempt to just swallow this and bear it until her test by the spirits is at last over. Is that what the spirits want? For her to pretend to be in love with someone she hated once, as if somehow that will make her forgive?

Azula makes a quick decision and takes Ty Lee's hand in hers. Ty Lee smiles faintly and Azula does not know what to say, she just tightens her grip and hopes for the best. Maybe she can have fun in this world, maybe it won't turn out as terribly as Azula is anticipating.

"First, I was thinking that maybe you could catch up with everybody," Ty Lee says warmly and Azula thinks that is a decent idea. "We tend to eat breakfast together."

It almost makes Azula laugh. She cannot piece together what steps she could have taken to lead her _here_. Even if someone explained it to her, it would probably sound like a ridiculous scary story. The very idea of this world and this life is absolutely absurd. But Azula breathes in and out, and tries to remain calm as Ty Lee walks them both to the dining room.

When Azula was last here, it was only used by she and her father. It was dim and dark, a place Azula never liked being much because so often it was just her eating alone at the gigantic table. But as she walks in now, the lamps are bright and there are people _talking_.

Including three young girls. They all have dark hair, and the dominant royal features of golden eyes and light skin. It is so eerie, to look at them, and see that there are _people_ in this world who intimately know her, but she has never met. At least Azula has known Mai, Zuko and Ty Lee, despite their transgressions.

Taking in a deep breath, Azula looks at Ty Lee, trying to show her confusion in her eyes without asking aloud.

Ty Lee gestures to them. "The oldest one is Izumi; she's Mai and Zuko's. The middle one is Azusami, and the little one is Kazumi."

Azula looks at them and swallows, her mouth suddenly incredibly dry. She does not know what to do. She never imagined that she would be a mother, and, now, suddenly she is.

But she has faced worse. Azula cracks her knuckles and walks to the table, finding a seat that seems fairly isolated. She does not want to have anything to do with Mai, or Zuko, or the strange children who recognize her, but she knows nothing about.

She looks for food she might like, and, thankfully, this universe has the same dishes Azula is used to eating. The princess makes the wise decision to focus on her food and carefully listen to the conversation. Reading the room is ultimately the best way for her to pick up on the nuances of this family.

"So, you seem to have amnesia still," Zuko says and Azula resists the urge to throw herself over the table at him. "That's wonderful," he adds under his breath.

"You're not planning on killing us, right?" Mai asks and Azula stares at her with her lip twisted into a slight, offended snarl.

"Not at the moment."

[X]

Azula could not follow the conversation. There were bits and scraps as they tried to explain to her, but she just wound up with a headache. Now, she is lying face first in her bed, the curtains drawn to keep it as dark as possible.

This is one of the worst things that has ever happened to her. And Azula does not know how she can bear another five minutes of living here, much less another day, or another month, or...

She is interrupted by Ty Lee just inviting herself in.

"Do you want to go to your job?" Ty Lee asks softly, and Azula feels as if she is blind and Ty Lee is leading her onward. There is not nearly enough trust inside of Azula to be comfortable with today, and learning who she is from this woman.

"What does it entail?" Azula inquires.

"You're Zuko's closest advisor," Ty Lee says brightly, her eyes lighting up with excitement.

Azula's lips part to speak, but she does not know what she is supposed to say for that. Princess Azula would _never_ accept second rate royalty. She wishes that the spirits had put her into a world where she was Fire Lord to learn her lessons.

 _Would that have been so hard?_ She demands internally and hopes whatever is pulling the strings can hear her aggravation.

"What are my other options?" Azula says slowly. She may be certain of few things in this life, but she is _very_ sure that she will not fare well serving Zuko instead of reigning over him on her first day.

"Do you want to go to the Memorial Meadow with Azusami and Kazumi?" Ty Lee asks quietly, looking quite concerned about bringing up their children. "You've been promising to take them for ages, but you've been so occupied with work that you never did."

Azula inhales and exhales as she weighs the pros and cons of each option. It takes a split second, even in her fractured mind to decide upon the logical next step, and she says, "I might as well take them. I know Zuko and Mai, even if I've somehow become their friends. I have no idea who those two are."

The unsaid reasoning is that Azula is still filled with swollen rage at Mai, Zuko and Ty Lee and how they all betrayed her. At least the two children have never locked her up in an asylum. They might be _okay_ , if Azula dares to hope for this world to be anything but agonizingly frustrating.

"I should probably come with you," Ty Lee says hesitantly and Azula nods.

"No one would disagree with that," Azula admits airily. She hopes she looks brave and cold, but she does not think she does. Then again, it isn't as if Azula has any dignity left at this point.

Ty Lee smiles eagerly, looking so _glad_. It sickens Azula and she is not sure why, the acidic anger bubbling in her chest and threatening to overflow. Of all of the things that are most difficult to accept, _this_ is the hardest.

Azula does think that a distraction like going to the park will be significantly easier to cope with.

Or so she hopes.

[X]

The older one gets it; the younger one has no clue and Azula just pretends.

The older one reminds Azula of herself to an upsetting degree; the younger one is just oddly reserved and quiet, overshadowed.

"Watch, watch, watch! Are you watching?" shrieks the older one from a tree she is hanging by her knees from.

It takes Azula a moment too long to realize that Azusami is screaming at her. Azula looks up, squinting in the strong summer sunlight, and Azusami looks likely do something incredibly dangerous. And, admittedly, Azula wants to watch.

"Okay, okay," Azusami looks like she is sweating, and Azula does feel her gut clench.

She has known the girl for less than day, but there is a very eerie connection when looking at her... daughter. _Daughter_. Disturbing word that Azula avoids using if she can, and has for her entire life.

Azula's eyes flicker towards Ty Lee, wondering if this is going to end with a child's broken neck, but she seems very concerned about Kazumi, who keeps trying to run into the sun as Ty Lee pulls her back.

But Azula stops trying to solve that odd puzzle when she hears the snapping of a tree branch, and the brief scream before Azusami manages to finish her firebending trick.

"That was really cool! I could have died but I still did the firebending flip!" she shrieks as Azula tries not to cringe.

It was relatively impressive, but also potentially deadly. And, at this moment, as Azula looks at the broken branch catching on fire and the flush in that little girl's cheeks, that she realizes how little of an idea she has of how to fill these shoes.

While Azula has always believed that whatever you named she could do and do better than anyone else. But it takes _time_ to forgive people, it takes _time_ to fall in love with someone and marry them, it takes _time_ to become a mother.

And Azula has lost twelve years.

"You, don't bend for five minutes," Azula says, pointing at the scowling girl awaiting praise or applause. Azula does know that feeling.

The princess stands up, pulling her sticky hair off of her sweaty neck and walks over to whatever is happening with Ty Lee and the smaller one.

"What's going on?" Azula asks before deciding to rephrase. "Is there..." She closes her eyes and does nothing to prevent her pained expression. "Is there anything I can do to help you?"

"Hold her," Ty Lee orders, pressing Kazumi's small hand into Azula's.

Azula _does_ clamp down, despite her complete confusion. Across the lake and in the shimmering water, there are a variety of children that the little one is staring at with pure envy.

"Can she not swim? Or something...? I could throw her in the water, if you'd like. I don't know why I didn't do that already.."

"That's... that's not how you're supposed to teach kids how to swim. It just teaches them not to trust adults."

"Well, I wouldn't trust you in the first place."

Ty Lee frowns, and Azula wonders why _she_ thinks she has the right to be angry.

"This is ridiculous."

"What else was I supposed to even do? I could've killed you where you stood but evidently you don't think I'm merciful enough."

"Not killing someone does not count as loving them."

"Have ever said I loved you?"

"Yes."

"Not that I can remember. There is nothing I can think of to do to you that would hurt you the way you did ─"

"Azula, if I had stayed with you do you really think there would have been some dreamy happily ever after? I needed to break free of you and realize that there was more to my life than what you thought of me! If you call that betrayal ─"

"I call it _selfish_!"

" _Selfish_? I don't even know how to respond to that, seeing as you couldn't distinguish other people, or your girlfriend, from a lamp or a houseplant! I am so sorry; I felt _horrible_ after Zuko told me what happened to you. I felt _so responsible_ for your breakdown, but I wasn't."

"How weren't you?" Azula snarls but she is interrupted by the child she had forgotten was in her hand trying to climb up her body.

She then sees the older one looking terrified, her eyes wide. Azula does not know that face; because she used watch her parents fight, her mother attempt to, at least. But it was always about _her_ , always about their daughter.

Azula does not know the words she is supposed to say, because she never heard them. She does comply with Kazumi grabbing onto her after attempting to viciously grapple up her leg.

"You're feverish," Azula whispers to the little girl.

"I wanna go home now," she insists softly and Azula attempts to push her away when she tries to get closer.

Well, Azula has been a mother for a day and has already traumatized both her children.

[X]

Kazumi just gets worse, and between soft, warbled complaints, she cries hysterically. Azula cannot take it; she has always hated the sound of people crying, and she really dislikes the wailing of the toddler.

Azula is certain that everyone can tell what she is thinking by their sympathetic looks. Looks of pity that Azula loathed beyond imagining.

"What's wrong with her?" Azula asks as confidently as she can, deciding it will be her choice to voice the concern. " _What's wrong with her?_ Did I do something to break her?"

Azula is starting to panic again, unsure what to do. Zuko is yet again speechless. He is not at all prepared for this.

"No," Zuko says at last, and the one word answer is not very helpful. "I forgot you didn't know."

"I don't know a lot of things ZuZu. Perhaps we can sit in a circle and everyone can spill their secrets so I can figure out _what is going on here_."

"She's sick. No, no not with anything contagious or terminal. As I said, you passed out after catching a bad cold we had passing around the family, and she took that harder than most because of her condition. It's a little flare up, and it's fine," Ty Lee insists as she rubs Kazumi's back and the crying turns into sniffles, while Azula has a slack jaw and endlessly swirling thoughts.

"That doesn't sound fine." Azula feels her heart racing again, and she thinks she might just keel over from a heart attack at any moment in this insane world. "How is that _fine_? Is that why you wouldn't let go of her?"

"I _would have_ explained it to you if you weren't too busy giving the entire park a dramatic show about your betrayed feelings," Ty Lee snaps without a single regret. "She can't go in the sun too often."

"That's ridiculous. Is she mine? She's mine, isn't she? I have no idea," Azula says, looking around. "What? I've never even _heard of_... Even _Zuko_ is made more powerful by sunlight. Even _Zuko_!"

Oh, well, there's another trauma. Azula fights the urge to cringe at shouting that in front of a small child. But from the looks on their faces, in this world, Azula has said such things before.

Zuko again looks at a loss for words, and Azula misses the brother that just shouted out whatever he was thinking. It would make this feel far less like stumbling down a dark hallway, without a lick of firebending and her hands flailing in front of her face.

"Azula," Ty Lee interrupts and the uncomfortable shared gaze of the royal siblings breaks. "Why don't you go check on Azusami? This always makes her nervous."

 _And you're making Kazumi nervous_ , Azula can hear implied in her tone.

The princess graciously accepts that out, that escape, and goes to the room of her eldest daughter. Azula knocks gently on the door, certain that she would never barge into her child's room. But maybe Azula did turn out like Ozai. Or perhaps even worse in the opposite direction.

She is yet again hit by another hard fact. Azula is, essentially, sixteen, and she has no idea how to parent a child. To make matters worse, she has absolutely no idea _how_ she is been doing this, or even why she decided to have children. Or if she _didn't decide_.

"Come in," chimes the light voice of the seven year old, and Azula steps inside.

The first thing that Azula notices in her daughter's bedroom is the dried flowers. They are so perfectly preserved, and Azula can remember how she used to do that. She enjoyed the thrill of deciding what lived or died, and, more so, she found the everlasting beauty of petals that should be dead incredibly appealing as a youth.

It was her only hobby outside of training for the war, and it makes all of this much eerier.

"Are you looking at the flowers?" Azusami asks and Azula's neck snaps to face her child. The little girl has her legs crossed on her bed, a book lying open on top of it. A book about dragons, and Azula wonders if she has made a connection with her child in the past.

A connection that is now perhaps permanently severed.

"The technique is excellent," Azula remarks and Azusami smiles and laughs. "Do I not compliment you?"

Azula's father certainly never did.

"Sometimes," Azusami says with a shrug. "One time you made me sort my toys by usefulness."

Azula cocks an eyebrow. She _can_ believe that about herself.

She then decides to redirect to the flowers, to the only common ground that Azula can find right now. "You collect them too?"

Azusami nods, her head tilted to the side. The truth is, she cannot remember the last time she tried to get along with another human. It is difficult, particularly when she has been this child's mother for so many years and now knows nothing about her.

"Yes," Azusami says, grinning with her eyes shut. Azula swallows her fear and starts looking through the gorgeously preserved flowers. "You taught me how."

"Really?" Azula is stunned by that. She never even showed her hobby to Mai or Ty Lee because she was rather ashamed. It was not the kind of thing that the great and powerful Princess Azula should enjoy.

"Mmm, yeah, after I burned down my second pagoda, mama said that I needed a hobby," Azusami says, her eyes glittering with a mischievous pride about her past mass destruction of the palace. "And since she said that me burning everything was your fault, you had to do it."

 _And I listened to her? When would I ever have let Ty Lee be anything but wholly submissive to me?_

The concept of Azula having a balanced marriage to her enemy is much more disturbing than the idea of one that is dysfunctional and grotesque. Azula would rather that she could point at it and declare that it was a mistake, but obviously _something_ happened that got Azula to this point.

She only wishes she understood better.

"So..." Now the awkward, uncomfortable silence comes. Magnificent. And Azula once had a silver tongue that crushed empires.

Azusami blushes and looks nervous before scrambling out of bed, "We could make a puzzle! Those are games. Those are _educational games_."

She looks quite serious about that and Azula thinks perhaps that the little girl is not trained. Or at least that Azusami is a little less afraid to break the charade of Azula being in paradise than everyone else.

And so, as Azusami finds one, Azula finds herself quite literally trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

"All puzzles have a method," Azula says confidently and Azusami nods once, biting at her lip.

She is holds the pieces to a puzzle that, when the pieces are placed together, should make a painted picture. It is not a type Azula even was certain existed, after she was used to tiles of different sorts, Pai Sho and the _infinite_ riddles her father made her solve.

He used to make her solve them before he let her sit down to eat.

Azusami is quite eager to do it, even though there are so many pieces.

As afternoon turns into evening, Azula notices that the little girl is illustrious and Azula sees herself in her, which is disturbing. It is an indescribable feeling to see a small child and to _know_ that it is yours, to feel the gut instinct to pull it into your arms, to see yourself in it, but to have never met the child before.

It makes everything very uncomfortable for Azula.

Azula does not particularly like children, but no one is disturbing her since this is _productive_ , and Azusami is not the worst of company. At least when she is not asking a thousand questions, or, in fact, asking the same question over and over, as she is right now.

"So, you have amnesia, huh?" Azusami inquires yet again and Azula yet again tells her to ask later. Azusami has decided that later means two to four minutes later and Azula thinks she is about to cave in before she checks _herself_ back into the asylum.

Azula wants to rip her hair out or burn the halfway completed puzzle, but she manages to control herself. This _has_ to be some magnificent feat of parenting; someone, perhaps the spirits, ought to reward her. Tolerating how annoying Azusami is absolutely should be proof that Azula is _incredible_ at parenting.

"Yes. It happens, sometimes, I think. Not that I ever cared. People lose all of the new memories but the old ones are so stuck in their head that they don't go away," Azula attempts to explain, even though she doubts any of that is what is going on with her.

All the same, it is much easier to explain it away like this, in a way this is easy for her supposed family to accept, and move on without anyone getting too suspicious. It is the _perfect_ cover story. But a perfect cover story does not help Azula escape her horrid situation.

"So, what do you last remember?" Azusami cocks her head to the side as she examines the puzzle pieces.

Azula does not know how much her daughter knows of her past. But she supposes that Azusami is about to find out, for better or for worse. Azula knew about war, death, torture and much more when she was Azusami's age; the child can probably take it.

"I was trying to escape Zuko," _and my mother_ , "and I decided to drown myself."

Azusami's eyes flicker with terror. "Why would you do that? If you did that, I would never have you!"

"Right." Azula does not know what to think or say. Azusami is strange. "Before then, Zu ─ your uncle locked me in an asylum." Azula hopes that perhaps this is part of the game she is supposed to win, being honest to her child. And so she continues, "I don't remember much of that because I wasn't lucid for most of it. Thankfully. Before then I lost a fight... You don't know any of this. Why do you know nothing of this? Do you even know that we were at war?"

"I know that," Azusami says quietly, a defensive flash in her eyes. "I learned most of it at school and everybody still talks about it and everything. I never knew about you. You never have talked about yourself really and mama said you just didn't like to."

Mama. _Ty Lee_. At least Ty Lee obeyed _one_ of Azula's desires.

"You know nothing about me?" Azula gazes at how innocent Azusami seems to think that is.

"Mhmh. I know that you and mama had a lot of trouble getting together. You both used to say that you had too many years of hurting each other to give up." Azusami does not seem to like that, and Azula does not like it either. "Sometimes we have problems and everybody fights, but that's how all families are. But uhhmm, never mind."

Azusami starts putting puzzle pieces together at a rather impressive speed. Azula means to compliment her, but she has no idea how to do it. Her own private puzzle is slowing down as Azula wonders how to accept what this little girl is saying. It would be enjoyable to pick up scraps of clues about how Azula lives now, if it were not so harsh and real.

"What is it?" Azula demands as she examines her own pieces, unable to think about them much.

Her father used to make her solve riddles before he would allow her to sit down and eat. Force her to memorize puzzles before she could go to sleep, no matter how much she resisted. This is one of her multitude of areas of expertise. But she is not feeling very pleased about it right now.

"You have, um, episodes," Azusami says quietly and the adult words sound strange in her young mouth. "It's bad. But everybody in this family is totally crazy. Like, uhm, crying, you cry, and can't breathe sometimes, and you're shaking and you don't even respond to people. Anybody but mama or Aunt Mai. You can't put your shoes on and sometimes yell at me but don't mean it and it's okay..."

 _Those_ adult words are much more disturbing coming from her child. Azula thought that this life was idyllic, that she had somehow become magically cured along the way. But apparently not.

Apparently, suffering is just a fun part of Azula's life.

Sudden realization. Father's words. _And suffering will be your teacher_.

Perhaps that has something to do with this? Azula looks at the puzzle in front of her and wishes this game she is trapped in were as easy as filling in a picture of a cherry blossom tree.

And then, as Azusami is trying to recover from the uncomfortable conversation, she nearly knocks over her drink. Azula lunges to catch it, and then changes her mind to catch her toppling child, and considers that a marvelous victory of fantastic parenting. Until the puzzle shatters all over the floor.

Azusami pouts and kicks the pillow she was sitting in, and Azula is not so certain about her fantastic parenting anymore. This puzzle looks very much how Azula is afraid that her world will end up, and that gives Princess Azula chills.

"Do you want to try to put it back together?" Azula offers, although she has no desire to do it. Starting from the beginning makes Azula's stomach churn; it would be too frustrating for a prodigy.

"No," Azusami hisses like an animal with a stomp of her foot.

And she disappears, leaving Azula to look at the carnage.

[X]

After Azusami makes the puzzle and shows Azula her best collections and pictures made from the petals, Kazumi has stopped crying in the other room, and Ty Lee pushes open the door very gently. Azula looks up, displeased to be torn from the few moments of sanity as she was focused on the flowers and her new little friend.

No need to think too much about Azusami as her daughter.

"She needs to go to sleep," whispers the woman in the doorway.

The one Azula knows. The one Azula hates, and the one Azula does not trust, and is supposedly married to. But Azula does leave the strange little girl to go to sleep, and returns to the room that is supposedly her own.

That night, after whatever madness she went through, Azula gets ready for bed, having at last figured out how different her bedroom and bathroom are. She does like to think of it as being a guest in someone else's home, and that makes it less disturbing.

Princess Azula is trying very hard to pretend that she just had a migraine, and not that she just had an inexplicable experience. Ty Lee seems fairly unalarmed, less than she was about Kazumi and her bout of illness.

Azula walks to bed and finds Ty Lee already in it, albeit not asleep.

"So, I just want to ask about how you feel about what happened at the lake," Ty Lee asks as if that is remotely appropriate for her to say to a superior.

"I have no idea why I would be obliged to tell you that," Azula whispers as she attempts to relax her limbs. "You haven't given me a single reason to give you a second chance."

"A second chance?" Ty Lee mutters to herself, but Azula looks away, and Ty Lee does not continue speaking.

"So," Azula does ask slowly. "I'm a bit curious about some of our history. Zuko told me about how I _apparently_ sweetly courted you. But I'm wondering if you find it very disappointing that we can't sleep together."

Ty Lee turns to look at Azula, their noses nearly touching.

"Why are you even thinking about that? Why? You refuse to even think about perhaps trying to find out _why_ you love me, but you're thinking about our post-marital sex?" Ty Lee asks in a tone of utter disbelief. Azula finds it silly and has to fight back cackles.

"Ty Lee, do you _honestly_ think I'm not having lustful thoughts?" Azula purrs, for the first time, quite honest with this woman. "I've always wanted you, and you're my _wife_. I am essentially sixteen."

To Azula's utter confusion, Ty Lee frowns at the last sentence and gently releases Azula's hands. "Which makes me a really sick person if I do have sex with you."

"Why?" Azula inquires, resting her thigh on the inside of Ty Lee's leg. "We had sex when we were fourteen. We're in our thirties? With two kids?"

"You're not that person. You're..." Ty Lee trails off and Azula can see that look in her eyes, that _craving_ for Azula to just break her.

And Azula would not deny her that. Because, as she pulls off her shirt, she does know that she has a perfectly adult, and incredibly sexy body. There is nothing wrong with it; Ty Lee is so _convinced_ that Azula is her wife, and Azula is perfectly fine with taking advantage of this part of her awful scenario.

Azula kisses her neck and Ty Lee shivers beneath her. It is perfect, albeit odd. She finds herself exploring her own body much more than her wife's. Perfect. It is perfect and Azula has never wanted this more than right now, right now when she has never hated her more.

Her nails dig into her wife, and then suddenly Azula finds Ty Lee pushing on her. Azula could resist, could force the job to the end, but she does pull back and linger.

"What's wrong with me?" Azula snaps honestly. "Are you playing this? This is a game, isn't it? And I don't know the rules!"

Ty Lee rubs her elbow. "I love you so much. Azula, I have always loved you ─"

"Well, I just want to fuck you!" screams Azula with very delayed remembrance of her two children in the other room. And how this is probably counterintuitive.

And Ty Lee just sighs. "This isn't happening until you get better. After the family reunion, you should go see someone."

 _Someone_ , very delicate words because now Azula can see, even in the shadows, even with both of their nakedness, that Ty Lee sees Azula for what she really is. The crazy girl she once knew, trapped in the body of a woman she has been so happy with.

"No," Azula refuses. She stands. "I'm not broken or fucked up. _You_ people are! You all are!"

"You're acting like a child," Ty Lee says softly as she stands and puts on her own clothes. "You're acting like a teenager, and I want to make you feel better. I loved teenage you when I was teenage you, but we're... there was a lot of pain on that road. I'm not living it again."

"What pain? How could _you_ and your cushy little island paradise, and all of your _power_ and _freedom_ possibly have endured _any_ pain?" Azula still screams, her eyes flashing gold in the dark like a predator in a jungle.

"Loving some people hurts." Ty Lee crosses her arms over her chest. "I can't redo twelve years. I just can't."

Azula is reminded of the puzzle breaking while she was playing with Azusami. And how Azusami kicked it around and refused to put it back together, and Azula had none of the energy to do it either. This is how it will be, for her, for Ty Lee, for Mai, for Zuko.

Their thousand piece puzzle broke on the floor, but the only options are to just lock Azula up somewhere, or start from the first piece.

But puzzles have a method, and Azula is determined to find a method to solving this life.

Azula looks at Ty Lee, and the glint in the darkness that means her eyes are open. As much as Azula does not _want_ to work with Ty Lee for a second, she knows that the best person to manipulate and coerce guilt out of is the weakest person here.

The one who has always loved Princess Azula. The one who Azula can prod and poke at least a few clues out of with something easy like a date or a few compliments. It wounds Azula's pride, but she must start somewhere.

[X]

Breakfast is uncomfortable. Breakfast is solely at a table with Zuko. Breakfast happens after Azula wakes sweaty from excruciating nightmares that give her headaches.

Zuko looks at Azula in the morning after a long silence, as she expected he would, and he says quietly, "Tomorrow we're going to Ember Island."

"Whatever."

"With our family and friends. Maybe they can..." Zuko licks his lips and Azula can see that he _is_ trying to manipulate her, for better or for worse. "Do you want to go back to work before we go?"

"I don't know why anyone even bothers asking if I want to participate in this game. I am certain I have no choice but to play along," Azula says sweetly as she does not bother to touch any of the food or drink. She will get her own, because she very well could have lost her memories due to poison.

"You don't," Zuko says and then he sighs. "That's a lie. I'm not going to pretend like we can do what we did in twelve years in two days, because it was difficult and we both had to make sacrifices. I'm just saying that we did get along, and I do really care about you and..."

Azula watches him stop as she rolls her eyes and expresses her disinterest. Like a teenager, she knows, but she _is_ one and she does not care what these captors think.

"I will give you the fact that, yes, I think we did always have the potential to perhaps one day reconcile. But since I apparently am allowed to speak freely and not bound and gagged, I think that you are very good at pretending, and it's almost admirable." She wonders if she should stand up, but she also wants to gauge his reaction and see if he is lying or not.

Zuko's face contorts in discomfort, in honest offense for a moment before starting, "I am─"

"Living in a beautiful fantasy where you pretend that none of the bad things you've ever done have happened?" Azula interrupts, her eyebrow twitching. She has no patience. At least not as much as she thought she had in her.

"No, I'm living in a life where I've atoned for my mistakes and acknowledge that I've made more of them than most people," Zuko says assuredly and Azula looks at him with pity instead of anger or disgust.

"It must be so fun to live in a fool's paradise."

[X]

Azula decides she has to take stupid initiative. She wants to just sit around, but she knows that the easiest person to coerce guilt or answers out of is the last person she wants to work with. Ty Lee. Ty Lee, who wants Azula to be _romantic_ with her. So, date time it is.

And so Azula walks through the palace and finds her alleged wife.

"Ty Lee," Azula says in a tone that makes the two little children things beside Ty Lee look confused. Oh, _please_ don't let Azula _really_ be that _soft_. "Go on a date with me. Now."

To that, Ty Lee looks up and studies Azula for a moment. Before sighing deeply and saying, "Let me fix my make-up."

Azula waits, pacing obsessively in the front hall, and at last Ty Lee arrives.

Alright, things just became slightly more difficult. "You did not just fix your make-up."

Ty Lee has upped her own game, certainly, and Azula wonders what she means by it. For her entire life, Azula has known that every person's action has an intent and a motive, but, for the first time, Azula is the person in the dark about them, instead of observing and using them in her favor.

The very stunning former acrobat is dressed in a quite tight rosy hued number, and looks beyond glamorous. Azula does not quite feel underdressed, her body does fit quite nicely into whatever she decides to put it into, but she does feel like it is difficult to keep her eyes in appropriate places.

"So, where are you taking me? Given that you decided to be so commanding, you must have an idea in mind?" Ty Lee asks with a mischievous little smile.

Azula does not. But her day out with Mai has given her a slight feel for the city, and so she simply lies. "Of course I do. But I'm not giving you an itinerary."

That smile widens and Azula averts her eyes.


	3. The Date

**Chapter Three: The Date  
**

* * *

Azula somehow finds herself at a candlelit table in an upscale restaurant with Ty Lee. She is trying to think of this as an investigation in order to win this game, and not a romantic date with someone who makes her stomach squirm with virulent hatred. But the questions are all about a fucking _marriage_.

"So, when did we decide to have kids?" is Azula's conversation topic change after discussing the menu and the new chef at an upscale favorite restaurant.

Ty Lee looks out as if someone heard that within their private room. "It was a me begging you for a while thing. And then a you agreeing and everyone else panicking and insisting that you be psychoanalyzed to make sure you were mentally fit to have a child."

Azula hesitates. "And that was Azusami? Who was her father?"

"Next question?" Ty Lee suggests, looking uncomfortable. Azula most certainly has her, if she continues at this exhilarating rate. "Kazumi is mine."

"But she looks just like me. Who's her father?" Azula demands, leaning forward.

"Next question?" Ty Lee continues and Azula is about to throw the table over when the waitress arrives with their appetizers, looking quite nervous.

"This seems like a very sad and cold marriage, if you can't discuss that," Azula says calmly as she leans back. Oh, poor, poor Ty Lee and thinking Azula is actually in love with her.

Ty Lee runs her tongue along her teeth. "There are things I think we should gently ease into."

"Fine. Which of us proposed?"

"You," Ty Lee says and Azula sees her tiny sigh of relief. "It was not romantic, but not unromantic either, if you know what I mean? Sexy. It was a _sexy_ proposal."

Azula has no idea what she means, and she can only manage to play along with the nonsense small talk for one course of their meal before she needs her more serious questions satisfied.

"How do I know that this isn't just a game? How do I know that maybe I lost my mind or my memories or you called up my old Dai Li pals and now you're trying to make me believe this life," Azula purrs and Ty Lee barely manages not to choke on her oolong tea.

"You have two kids," Ty Lee says softly, her eyes looking either hurt or guilty. But they are genuinely sad, and _genuinely human_ instead of plastic for the first time. Azula keeps that tender guilt in mind, before allowing Ty Lee to change the subject to something more comfortable for herself. Azula will get nowhere if she pushes Ty Lee to the edge again. "And I mean, how do you even fill in twelve years?"

"I wouldn't be shocked if the Avatar and Zuko thought it was merciful to lock me up," Azula says calmly, and she does not get another reaction of guilt. She gets an angry twitch of Ty Lee's lips.

"Like you think about me and Mai."

Azula's eyes flash before she decides to quickly change her approach after the comment on her hypocrisy.

"That's the most logical conclusion. Don't give me the two kids. I can... Zuko has one of them who looks an awful lot like me. Maybe they're his. Maybe they're mine by a very unkind method. Maybe I've been locked up playing house and I got sick of it─"

"Those are ridiculous theories! I don't even know how you could say that!" Ty Lee screams, before seeing the people in the restaurant turning to stare and ducking her head down. Azula thinks perhaps she protests too much.

Azula wanted it to be time travel, wanted it to be spirits. But it might have been more sinister, and she does not know which to choose from.

"Let's talk about now, seeing as I'm stuck here. We were together once, a long time ago," Azula states dismissively, her lips contorted into a faint frown. "But you have to realize that I have no clue what happened to get us back together. I can't imagine myself ever agreeing to even speak to you again."

Ty Lee glances around at the walls again, examining her peachy hands. "I always loved you."

"I don't care." Azula is startled at her own vehemence, but she does not regret it.

"We got together really slowly, and fell apart a lot of times really quickly, and got back together again and again. Eventually, all of those pieces fell into place," Ty Lee says warmly, although Azula can see the hurt in her eyes.

"That's conveniently vague," Azula says coldly, trying to restrain herself from simply combusting. "Tell me what you said to get me with you, if I actually did. Why would I agree to marry you? What game are _you playing_?"

Now Ty Lee does not even try to mask her sadness and fear. Azula likes it, Azula thrives on watching Ty Lee's hope be crushed under her feet, even though she knows that it is not in her best interest.

"You proposed to me. I just told you and you can read people like scrolls, can't you? If I'm lying about how much I loved that moment, then you must be such a fraud," Ty Lee says softly, and Azula is not sure if she is insulted or not. She does not react either way. "It was after a long while of being together without breaking up. It was perfect."

Azula takes a slow breath through her mouth, the migraine jolting through her like a lightning strike. She just cannot imagine being the person that she is. How could Azula have gotten to this point? How could she have _bent_ to their will and decided to live her life the way Zuko and mother and the Avatar all wanted her to?

"Why?" Azula asks, shuddering as she manages to hold back the sobs that want to escape her lips. She is the strong one; she is the one stuck in this maze that _someone_ thinks she cannot escape, but she will outsmart, and she cannot break down and lose her mind. "I can't figure out this story from just bits and pieces, and if you supposedly are my _wife_ , then you owe me honesty."

"You were redeemed. Because Zuko refused to quit, and I..." Ty Lee gently nudges her plate away from herself. "I helped. I was... _we were_ the incentive for change in you."

That begins to make sense, Azula supposes. If the spirits presume that Ty Lee would be the one to slowly heal Azula and manage to make her a functioning member of society, then tossing Azula into the middle of a peaceful marriage must be their best way of getting her to change.

"So, I fell in love with you again. Zuko said that I was found, and then...?"

"You broke down even more. No one thought you could even go lower than that," Ty Lee says and Azula grimaces. "But, you proved everyone wrong like you always do. Zuko got legal custody of you and decided to put you together at your own pace. Which was, uh, pretty slow. Extremely slow, actually."

"And then my true love came along and kissed me better? Is that the lie you're trying to sell me? How gullible do you even think I am?" Azula snarls.

"That's not at all how it went," Ty Lee says fiercely. "And we're still not all the way better because nobody was a magic cure. It all took _so much time_ and so much crying and..."

"We're leaving. Take me to the pier." Azula stands up and Ty Lee stares at her. "I'm giving you a second chance. Don't question it."

Ty Lee does not.

[X]

"Do they still have that weird candyfloss stuff my dad wouldn't let me eat by the water?" Azula asks, and Ty Lee nods, the two of them walking.

People do stare, Azula notices. But it does not feel horrible.

Or, at least, it does not feel horrible until Ty Lee walks to buy the candyfloss and Azula moves to sit down and save a bench for them both, since Ty Lee is great at getting discounts from male cashiers, and Azula could probably save an entire amphitheatre if she wanted to.

Azula is quite liking the feeling of old times until her head splits, and she can see red. The princess opens her eyes, they are painful as she stares around her in an utter panic.

She thinks she is still by the water, but it looks... as she remembers it outside of this life. Azula is spinning around, staring at the passersby, all with blurred and distorted faces. Some of them snap in half and soak into the blurry buildings and it makes Azula have to force herself not to hyperventilate.

"Princess!" shouts a loud voice Azula does not recognize, and she moves to start running, looking at her hands and seeing their difference, their youth, the freshness of the scars from clawing herself to bits.

 _Oh Agni, no, no, no..._

Azula runs and can see the soldiers after her. Her feet are bare and she can feel something heavy on one hand. Remnants of handcuffs. Remnants of handcuffs.

She almost throws up but she instead turns, running towards an alleyway and wondering when _this_ happened. No, no...

"She can't do this again!" Zuko, shouting, angry, his voice not calm and rolling. Barely twenty year old Zuko.

The world still does not come into focus. It looks like the surrealist paintings Azula never had a taste for, and she jumps over a bench and watches all of the people fading around her, the ashes.

Headache. Horrible headache. Azula is standing in the pier, right by where she just plunged right out of this future and into an equally enigmatic past. She stares at the building that is the alleyway she ran into.

Someone grabs her hand. Azula turns. Ty Lee.

"Did you...?" Of course not. Oh, of course not.

Azula does not quite like what she just experienced.

"Why did you just take off?" Ty Lee very quietly asks. "You're not trying to escape, are you?"

To that, Azula just opens her mouth. "You are trapping me. This is a ruse, isn't it?"

Azula's heart pounds, and she is fairly certain she cannot breathe.

"No," Ty Lee says, staring at Azula. "I just meant that you are in the state of mind of someone who had been imprisoned for a long time. But you're free now, even if you don't remember it. You're an adult now, so enjoy this candy and I'll take you back to the palace."

Azula looks around and every pedestrian has a relatively clear face. Faces staring at her.

When Azula looks up at the moon, she sees it is the same. Sun and moon, the same.

Everything else, both different and unstable.

[X]

Azula wakes alone.

She wakes differently in this world. Her mattress is comfortable, her eyes slowly open instead of frantically looking for a way out. But she still wakes up dead, like she always does. Azula can see the sun pouring through the window, but it no longer gives her a sense of security.

Her nightmares were horrible and inexplicable last night. She cannot remember them, but her body is drenched in sweat and she still feels her heart pounding. The relief of opening her eyes, even after her downfall, was a small comfort. But now she feels as if she is just leaving one nightmare and waking up in another.

Being trapped in another life is even harder than being caught in the spikes of a trap.

Sore and sleepy, she languishes in bed for a while, realizing just how much she has missed this room. Even if it has changed, it still has some of the same scuffs, the same little burns or her name etched into the wall beneath pain that could not quite cover it.

Still, if her mind was going to place her into another world, why did it put her into one that sucks just as much as the one she used to inhabit?

Azula dreams of a world where she is Fire Lord, or where everything just worked out, or maybe she just settled. But it would be more plausible to hope for a world in which it only rains champagne and the sun never sets.

Someone knocks on the door and Azula shoots up in a flicker of panic, her hand ablaze before she realizes herself and manages to calm down.

"Are you...?" Zuko.

"Just come in," Azula says sharply, her heart racing in uneven, rapid fits and starts.

Zuko strides into the room and Azula leans back, one of her knees up. It usually would be a position of submission or comfort; _I know you won't kill me or lock me in an asylum again_. But, in the case, it is a position of calm superiority and fearlessness; _I know you won't kill me or lock me in an asylum again_.

"So, we're leaving this afternoon," he announces, watching her warily, and Azula thinks his tone _would_ be calm, but it has traces of nerves woven into it. "Aang and Katara and their kids are coming. Toph gave a very cryptic and noncommittal response, so maybe or maybe not. And Uncle, obviously, but that's it. No mother or anybody else."

Azula does not know what she is supposed to say to that. She thinks that this situation could not be any worse, but there is no protesting. Her every bone hurts and aches as if she has the flu, and she desperately wants to just run.

But running will not do her much good, save for a last resort. She never manages to run, somehow, because there has never been a place for her to go.

She remembers an oddly open conversation with her alleged wife.

 _I didn't run away from home, I was running towards home,_ Ty Lee said and Azula had no clue what it meant.

Azula still does not, but it sounds pretty these days.

"Do I have to pack or something?" Azula asks coldly, resigning to her fate. She cannot believe that she would _ever_ tolerate those people, but Azula _does_ suppose her mother could have been there, which likely would have been a thousand times worse.

"Yeah. Whoever you want can help you. Or you can figure it out, or something, but I don't think you've ever packed yourself before," Zuko says, scratching his cheekbone, and Azula just shrugs.

"The only person I will interact with is Mai," Azula states assertively, and she wonders how she wound up saying that. It is the absolute last thing she ever imagined coming out of her mouth after the Boiling Rock, but her words do not feel like her own in this plane of reality she inhabits.

Zuko takes a deep breath and Azula again fails to properly analyze him. It aggravates her to the core.

"I'll ask her to come by after she finishes. Or wakes up for that matter," Zuko says casually before leaving the room with another word.

Azula frowns, curling her toes beneath the silky blankets. She can barely remember what it felt like to actually be comfortable and she runs her fingers through the sheets as well. Her bed is a pleasure, when she is not sharing it with her worst enemy. In the safety of her bed, her old life of anguish is miles away, year behind her, yet somehow she is so unhappy with where she is.

Princess Azula has lucked out on at least one thing; packing for the vacation means rifling through every drawer and winnowing out the traces of her existence. In fact, she is quite perturbed by the fact that perhaps she does not even exist.

She has already explored the closet for clothes and examined all of the bottles in the bathroom, but none of that was very revelatory.

Now she has the perfect opportunity to lose herself within the potential clues that forgotten items could give her. At least until Mai shows up, but Mai seems to not give a single fuck, as usual, so Azula thinks that will not pose much of a problem.

Azula waits until Zuko's footsteps fade into silence, and then drags herself out of the cozy bed. She hates leaving it, but she is filled with excitement in anticipation of rooting up this room and finding anything that could help her navigate this world... and then _escape_ it.

First she has to locate some kind of suitcase. She stares blankly at the precipice of the abyss that is her closet, before checking outside of the door. Zuko left it before _running_. He may be mature and calm these days but he will always be a coward.

She seizes it and tosses it on the bed, quite pleased with the strength in her body. It feels uneven and strange; her balance is completely off and her tests of her bending have been minimal and inconclusive. There are few words to truly explain being in someone else's body, but recognizing it as your own at the same time. Azula is still not certain just what her capabilities are, and not used to the weight of things in her hands, or the way her legs move when she runs her toes along the smooth sheets of her bed.

Azula starts with clothes. She is not sure at what moment Mai will walk in, and while the princess is uncertain if this world is real or not, she does know that she should not do anything remotely suspicious.

She suddenly realizes that she has no idea how to pack. Never has she done it for herself, and it is odd to her. Well, she needs some shirts maybe pants, dresses? A bra, probably. Mmm.

Ugh. Azula just tosses everything that looks as if it will fit into the suitcases and decides someone else will carry it if it is too heavy.

Now, she begins to pry more. It feels kind of like snooping around in another person's room, despite it being her own. Azula is invading the privacy of a Princess Azula who may or may not exist, and it is odd.

Azula once was told by a very ambitious day planner that the human mind saw their future self as a different person, and therefore could not understand how their actions would bite them tomorrow. It was aggravating, and she assumed it was some kind of myth to make young girls stick to schedules. But right now, it seems fairly true.

Pictures are the easiest thing to find. Azula's desk is far different from how she left it, but she had a long enough absence that it would be strange even in the reality she believes exists.

There are a few portraits. A couple sketches that Azula actually recalls. That is definitely the older child, with Azula and Ty Lee. The portrait is flattering, but not evidence enough. Her mind could construct a picture. Anyone could forge it. And who knows what the spirits could design?

All the same, it means that she has an established past in this life, whether or not it is true or not. That will make the temporary transition easier.

Her hands briefly rest on one that she likes. But then it becomes very uncomfortable to her. Because while she is portrayed beautifully by the art itself, she is detached, cold and has her eyes averted, her lips parted seductively, while her alleged wife smiles faintly and holds a content baby.

Azula decides she hates the pictures, until she stumbles across some that are definitely not of her supposed family.

They all consist of weird, distorted art, sketched very quickly with little attention to detail, but detailed all the same. Azula recognizes them, is the problem. Not in a solidified way, but in the way you see a person on the street and they look slightly familiar, but you do not have the slightest idea who they remind you of.

Azula starts flipping through them, and finds some that are vibrantly colored in. Notes in margins that make very little sense to her. This is a very private book of crumpled parchment and dried black ink, and she thinks it might belong to her.

That assumption is confirmed when she flips to a page that she could not miss.

It is from her recurring nightmares. She closes it, unsettled. But then she tries to be brave and keep scanning through it, paying more attention to the notes. Just more pictures, a few that Azula recognizes well, others that are odd, a few that actually seem sweet since Azula can recognize the vague portrait from the curl of her lips and the flow of her hair.

That one ends and Azula begins rummaging through the desk for more. More. She feels as if she is dying of thirst and has been given a mocking single drop of water. Her hands brush against a set of expensive pens and ink, and she contemplates seeing if she can still draw like that now, but she pushes it aside and keeps digging for answers.

At last, she sees it, a journal, and she flips it open to the first page. There is a good deal of writing but none of it makes very sense.

Then there is a knock on the door, and Azula quickly picks up the book resting on top of it. A wedding album. How ridiculous. But it does disguise what she was doing as Mai walks in.

The Fire Lady examines Azula's suitcases and sighs. "You have no idea how to pack, do you?"

And Azula _"helps"_ her. Mostly by lingering nearby and offering uninvited orders.

At last, Azula looks up at Mai and decides to say something worth saying.

"You know why I have trouble believing this is real?" Azula asks and Mai glances at her and shrugs before going back to the suitcase. "Because supposedly we're all so happy."

Mai hesitates. "That's a good thing, though."

"No." Azula shakes her head. "I can imagine perhaps after over a decade that the world stabilize, and balance would happen because of the Avatar, and maybe even Zuko would be able to balance himself better with practice." She has to inhale sharply after the compliment of Zuko; it makes her worry if this world is getting to her. "But there is a particular kind of suffering that should be present but isn't."

"What?" Mai actually seems curious, but Azula might be _miscalculating._

At that thought, her fingers clench to punch Mai in the face for no reason, but she collects herself to avoid prison.

"Families have things they pass down as gifts to their children. Traditions, jewelry, wedding dresses and lullabies. Well, our family bequeaths pain on each other generation after generation as our family heirloom."

Mai looks at her for a long time, or perhaps a short time, Azula feels quite shaken by what she has admitted aloud. It is a thought she has perpetually had, the reason she hated Zuko for being so loved by the only people who managed to avoid the pain... at least for a little while.

"You might be surprised," Mai says quietly, and she looks as if she is saying _too much_. "You're smart. You should know that when you're in this screwed up state, everybody is going to tip-toe around you and show you that the fire-lilies are redder on this side."

Azula contemplates that for a moment. "So I just have to pry us open and watch the fireworks?"

"Something like that," Mai says, and Azula is genuinely uncertain if she is being sarcastic or earnest. "I packed your stupid bag. Now go do something actually useful."

The princess hesitates as Mai locks the suitcase without another word and leaves.

Such melodramatic behavior for a dispassionate bitch.

[X]

Azula's mind perpetually dances with questions that she does not want to ask.

They simmer within her as she sits out of sight on the boat, watching the woman deep in conversation with Zuko. At first, it looked flirtatious and Azula kind of wanted to scream, regardless of her putting any feelings behind her. Yet, it is not flirty. It looks like family speaking to family and that somehow unsettles Azula more than it would if Ty Lee were setting her hand on his arm or batting her eyelashes subtly.

That was how Ty Lee acted with Azula, and Azula had never exactly had friends other than Mai before. Mai was not the type of girl who did that kind of thing, but Princess Azula was very well aware of the fact that sometimes girls like Ty Lee just did that.

So it definitely took more than it should have for Azula to realize that her interest was reciprocated. More than reciprocated, maybe. But it ended, and it ended for good reason.

Somehow, though, Azula and Ty Lee have spent what seems like an eternity to a sixteen year old Azula together. And so, she cannot help but wonder how they fell in love.

To know nothing about that is somehow much more unsettling than the fact that she is some kind of pet to Zuko. She kind of wonders if it was forced, or who asked out who. Azula has nothing, not a single image except for Ty Lee keeping trying to hold Azula's hand on their one and only real date, and Azula would not let her.

Was that a regret? No, no, of course not.

But, honestly, Azula feels like whatever she had with Ty Lee was once upon a dream. Despite the fact that Azula knows her inside and out, none of that makes sense anymore. This Ty Lee is fierce and confident, and this Ty Lee somehow made some kind of pretty, peaceful life with her princess.

She wonders if Ty Lee ever got her to hold hands. The image of that in her mind is laughable, but it must have happened at some point. She wonders if it was slow and tentative, or if it just happened and they collided like the ocean against the cliffs.

That distracts Azula for a good deal of time, having a variety of visions that are fun to think about, but make no sense. About Ty Lee waiting so impatiently for Azula to finish speeches she wrote for her brother, or maybe the curl of her lip when she concentrates, or perhaps they wound up lost in a flooded canyon like that boy and girl in the book they loved when they were young. They used to play pretend about that when they were young...

"Azula," says a high pretty voice and when Azula blinks several times, clearing her vision, she realizes that she is most distinctly not on the horrible boat road to Ember Island.

She is in a room she does not recognize, filled with people, somewhat faceless, incredibly distorted. They are the warped people that Azula saw when this reality flickered away and she became trapped between it and another back at the pier.

"Azula. Azula," demands Ty Lee and Azula quickly looks up. Everything is _multicolored_ here, yet somehow monochrome.

"W-what?" Azula suddenly realizes the perfect clarity of this world.

The waves have faded to very gentle and classical music, the wind into the buzzing whispers of partygoers, and the rocking of the ship is the swaying. How the dancers around them _sway_. And Ty Lee is holding out her hand expectantly.

Azula does not even consider not taking her hand. She does not feel in control of her body and she is horrified by it. Ty Lee leads this dance and Azula cannot fathom why she is in this position right now. They are younger, and Azula has no idea why the blue, green, red and yellow clash so fiercely in this packed ballroom of faceless people dancing and talking.

"You look a little queasy," Ty Lee says very softly, and she sounds like herself. She doesn't sound like the emotional and oddly angry woman Azula has two kids with.

"I'm fine," Azula says and the words do not feel like her own.

Is she just acting out a scripted scene? Is she in some kind of time loop? She does not understand and she _hates it_. Princess Azula brought down the walls of Ba Sing Se, but now she feels impossibly weak.

"If you're sure," Ty Lee says warmly.

"You should be the queasy one," Azula responds coldly, but her voice is too kind. Much kinder than Ty Lee deserves.

"I know," Ty Lee replies, and her smile is not charming but _charmed_. "Are you nervous about this? That would be _so_ adorable if you were."

Ty Lee's eyes glimmer. Azula has no idea what she is nervous about, but she has the sudden, lurching sensation inside of her that maybe she is stuck in this life now, and perhaps she should keep her mouth shut about the fact that she is certain that she is dreaming.

So she lets herself be led. It is odd to Azula, but she does not know this dance, and she does not know this world, and so she just tries to maintain herself as cool, cold and detached. Ty Lee swirls and they sway and spin around a thousand stars.

Azula steps away very gently, uncertain what happens now, or where she is going to next.

She waits breathlessly for this dream to end, but it does not. Ty Lee looks at her, seeming quite confused. Princess Azula turns and looks for an exit, but the walls have sealed around her. Her heart pounds and she wants to scream, or cry or start a fire.

But she keeps looking for a door. There is none.

Suddenly, Ty Lee seizes her arm. "Do you want to get out of here?"

"Yes," Azula says earnestly, not bothering to hide her relief.

And there, in front of them, is a door, an exit.

Azula breathes in and inhales the scent of saltwater and the lemon cleaning mixture.

"Kinda creepy, huh? You staring like that," Ty Lee says, her lips contorting into a smile.

Azula sets her hand on the side of her head. She has not quite adjusted to this yet. It felt like the sudden glitch in time she felt on the pier, but this one made so much less sense, and the transition was disturbingly smooth.

"I just have a headache. I wasn't looking at you," Azula says crisply, and she stands up.

Her legs wobble, and Ty Lee catches her. Azula's cheeks flush with embarrassment, and she breaks away from her supposed wife as quickly as she can to go lie down in the darkness within the boat.

It was not entirely a lie. Azula's head is splitting in half, and nothing can abet the flow of pain.

She lies back and takes deep breaths.

They are almost to Ember Island, and there, Azula will learn more of this life.

Or at least hide while everyone has fun on their vacation and forgets about her pathetic existence.

[X]

Ember Island is frozen in time, as it always has been.

But, alas, this world still feels different in way that Azula cannot quite fathom. Her skin prickles whenever she sees signs or shops that she recognizes, because perhaps the words are freshly painted or the curtains a slightly different shade, and it is uncanny.

"Do you want to tell them about your...?" Zuko asks, squinting at his sister.

Azula rolls her eyes. " _Yes_ , I am so excited to tell all of your little friends about how I was just drowning and now have woken up as some kind of weak and pathetic mother of two with the suspicion that there was Spirit World interference."

Zuko's hopeful expression fades.

"Well, it's your secret, not ours," he says and she makes a face like she is just bitten into something dreadfully bitter. "I'm just... It took us a really long time to become friends ─ _okay_ , not quite friends ─ but I do love you and I hope you can ─"

"Stomach this appalling display of submission from the _Fire Lord_?"

Zuko just stares at her for a moment before walking away. Not that she cares. The only way Azula ever could _actually_ get along with Zuko is if she was playing him somehow. And Azula will not accept any other answer, because the thought of her _actually_ making amends with him is terrifying.

Azula is watching Ty Lee again as they walk up the slippery, sandy steps into the Summer Palace. Thankfully, none of their _"family"_ members have arrived yet, and Azula can slowly take in this house, and how it has changed even more than the palace.

A slow sensation washes over her. This is _real_ , isn't it? She could still be in some magic trap but this _isn't a dream_. She rests her hand on the wall, on the slightly lighter paint where a frame or tapestry once hung. Azula tried to ignore this knowledge of the changes; she attempted to brush it aside until she could plan a way to escape.

But maybe there is no escaping. Maybe this is it. Her former time capsule from childhood is alterated and refurbished beyond recognition. Zuko removed any war relics and replaced with what the new _Fire Lord_ and the enemy prefers. New but weathered and old paint renders most of it unrecognizable, the furniture either brand new or reupholstered.

 _No_.

No, Azula is not like this house. She cannot be. That is too ridiculously metaphorical and a stupid palace can be changed in a month of work from contractors. A tiger-monkey cannot change its stripes the way walls can be repainted.

But, then again... her body is significantly different after twelve years. Her mind snapped in less than twelve _weeks_. It is so possible, even if it seems absurd.

Someone touches her arm, and Azula notices how ridiculous she must look. But she cannot summon a snarky response; Zuko's one is throwing a fit about forgetting something anyway. Ty Lee.

"Why are you touching me?" Azula asks sharply and it does not come out as intimidating as she wants it to.

"So you don't fly away," Ty Lee says very quietly. Her eyes rest on Azula for a moment as if she is expecting a response. But she clears her throat as Azula gazes at her with her lips in a snarl. "I'm sorry about last night. I mean, _no_ , you should be the sorry one, but I didn't help at all, and I should be... the adult in this situation." She grimaces at that.

"Well, yes, it was certainly the worst night we ever spent together." Azula pauses. "Except for perhaps when you made me adapt to sleeping with the lights on and then suddenly needed to sleep with them off."

Ty Lee is laughing as Azula glares. It wasn't a joke.

"You were scared of the dark," Ty Lee whispers and Azula just turns away huffily. "There are still some things here that didn't change. If that's what's bothering you."

Azula nods, uncertain what to say. Ty Lee might be luring her away to murder her, but Azula decides to take her chances. They walk in silence at first, before Ty Lee speaks, startling her alleged wife.

"I was scared. I've been scared. I don't like this idea, the _idea_ of this, the idea of you being, uhm, just you know," Ty Lee stammers and Azula finds so much questionable in her words despite keeping her lips sealed. Everyone sounds more nervous than they should be.

Or perhaps they actually _do_ care about Azula.

No. They are definitely using her or tricking her and it would be too hopeful and naive to think they _care_ about her. Azula refuses to get hurt by thinking that way.

"You should be scared," Azula says and the words don't quite feel right in her mouth.

"I really do want to try," Ty Lee says and Azula thinks she might be telling the truth.

But she believed Ty Lee before and was wrong.

They reach a locked door and Ty Lee tugs on it. Again. Again. Again.

Ty Lee glances at Azula, as if expecting help, but the princess has no desire to offer it. At last, Ty Lee gives up and sighs.

"It's... maybe Zuko has a key somewhere. I don't know why he locked it up." She shrugs and Azula simply stares.

"I'm going to take a nap, and I do not want to be disturbed even if there is a tsunami hurtling towards us." Azula moves to walk away but when Ty Lee's hand twitches to grab her, she rolls her eyes and turns around. "Do you remember a..." and then Azula realizes how _vague_ her understanding of the vision was. She changes her mind and strides away before Ty Lee can ask a single question.

She swings open doors until she finds one with an actual bed in it, and promptly locks herself in.

Locked up, just like the rest of the relics.

[X]

Princess Azula wakes from her very long and nightmare-ridden nap after hearing the loudest, most obnoxious laughter in the history of time. Ugh. And out there is a gathering of jerks who all look so different that it is strangely more shocking than Zuko, Mai and Ty Lee were.

Perhaps Azula has just memorized their faces, their mannerisms, and so the abrupt change was less, well, abrupt.

Azula is not sure how she will be able to keep her state secret. A single question or remark could knock her down. And she feels as if there is something so _questionable_ about hiding it, that... perhaps there is not Spirit World magic. Perhaps this is all some disgusting ploy and Azula keeps leaning more and more towards that every day.

She creeps forward just a little bit. They all look so _perfect_. Azula does not know why their laughter feels like being stabbed in the gut repeatedly, but she must end it.

And so, without revealing much, she leans against the doorway.

"I said no disturbances. So, unless you have something so monumentally funny that it is worth waking me up, everyone be silent or go outside where barking animals belong."

Well, no one says anything, staring, wide-eyed as Azula waits for a heartbeat and goes to find somewhere more isolated to sleep.

Sleep is good. Sleep is the same in every life.

Azula never thought she would love her nightmares so much.

[X]

Azula is coerced into reclining on the stone porch. She hates being in the shade, but her _migraines_ which are kind of real and kind of not much like this life, excuse her from having to interact with people who everyone insists are her friends.

Or at least not her enemies.

Mai is in the shade as well, and Azula never thought she would be grateful for Mai so much.

"I used to really want you to die in a horrible, graphic way," Azula says, glancing over at her alleged sister-in-law.

"Thanks." Mai still does not open her eyes.

"But I've come to appreciate you. You're the only person who doesn't care enough to try to _help_ me. It's refreshing." Azula lies back down, her hands clasped and resting on her navel.

 _There, spirits, have I learned my lesson now?_

Out by the water, Zuko's one and one of Azula's are playing with the Avatar's girl-child and the Avatar's boy-child is bothering Toph. Azula can somewhat bear her, because she just muttered something about migraines being for the pathetic and expecting more from _Princess Trustworthy_ , while even the horrible water whore offered her things.

 _I could heal you_ , she says. Ha. Ha. Ha.

 _I could burn you alive but I am_ choosing _not to and therefore I am a better person than you..._ Azula does not say.

"Where's my other one? Second Daughter," Azula asks and Mai shrugs.

Well, speak of a wildfire, there she is, grabbing Azula's hand. She is damp with ocean and sand, but does not seem to care. Ick.

"I thought you couldn't go in the sun or something... uh...?" Azula cocks an eyebrow in distaste.

"You know her name, Azula," Mai mutters and the princess sighs.

"Yes, Kazumi, why are you sandy and wet?"

"Bumi took me," the girl says matter-of-factly, and then clutches Azula's hand harder. "But I think mama knows so pretend I was here."

Azula glances at her and reluctantly clasps her hands around the smaller ones.

She thought she had nothing to lose, until that screeching and halting and blending of worlds starts and Azula is powerless to stop it.

 _It_ happens for the third time, but this one somehow hurts more. The headache just makes her want to get down on her knees and shriek, but she is frozen, in another's body that looks and feels like hers or perhaps it has more scars and has been touched more gently or houses a soul people like better.

More is blurry now than just faces, and Azula wonders briefly if it is the headache, or because this is not real.

Laughing. Ty Lee is laughing and Azula looks down at the little hand in hers that is most definitely a small child that looks like a little her and Ty Lee is in front of them and laughing so hard.

"She won't let go," Azula says and she doesn't think the words are her own. "Why?"

"Because I never do," Ty Lee replies, her shoulders still shaking. "She's lucky to get a fragment of your attention."

Silence. Ty Lee has said something awful but Azula does not quite know what it is.

And Ty Lee says, "I'm sorry. I didn't think it would come out that way."

The rather unnoticed child tugs on Azula's arm and she just _falls_.

She opens her eyes and gasps because she has realized how strange the words on her lips feel and that maybe this world is as fake as the ones she keeps stumbling through. But then where is she? Where is she? Where is she if she is not here, or running from soldiers, or dancing in a ballroom or in a sweet family moment. Where is she?

"You're right here," says a distinct voice. Uncle.

He is half-guiding, half-carrying her inside and helping her onto the chaise lounge. She did not know that she was speaking aloud, and she is filled with humiliation from passing out like that.

She wants to make a biting remark of some sort to redeem herself, but she is at a complete loss for words.

"No one seems very worried about me," Azula says coldly, glancing at everyone outside.

"This is not an uncommon occurrence for you," Iroh says and Azula squints at him. And then he hastily tries to make up for it, as everyone talking to a crazy person does with, "Have you been drinking enough water? It is very hot."

There is a part of her, something _animalistic_ , that sees the weak and annoying elder and wants to rip his throat out with her teeth. It is a very odd feeling. But _stranger_ yet, is the fact that, of all of the people here, Azula is most relieved to be stuck with Iroh... making her tea.

"What isn't a common occurrence?" Azula asks bitterly, not comprehending at all what he means. Then Azula is struck by something very sudden and abrupt. "You went into the Spirit World, didn't you? To look for... It was just a rumor, but..."

Iroh stands up, spilling a few tea leaves onto the sandy, mud streaked floor. It would be a sad moment, if he were not suddenly focused on her.

"Why do you ask?" Iroh inquires and Azula feels her heart flutter. He knows something.

Or Azula might just be going crazy, because Iroh is a total loon and listening to him would be preposterous. On the other hand, seeing as he _is_ old and filled with the type of wisdom that just makes people not as gullible as Zuko roll their eyes (and Azula has never met a person more gullible than Zuko).

"I think I was brought back from the dead," Azula says and then grimaces from the regret. "Please forget that. I'm not crazy, okay? I'm not... If the last thing _you_ remembered was drowning in _spirit water_..."

Iroh stares at her for a long time, as if not sure what to believe. His body tenses so much when Azula says _dead_ , and she would like to think he is just uncomfortable about Lu Ten, but his eyes keep flickering to the happy family outside.

Azula...

Did she murder someone? That feels so possible, but Azula is not treated like a murderer...

"I understand," he says quite earnestly and Azula is not sure what to make of it. "No matter what really happened, and I will not discount that there could have been spirit interference, you have lost over a decade. It is disorienting, I am certain."

"Zuko said that when I first came home, I didn't think the world I was in was real."

Iroh nods, his eyes glittering with _nerves_. Agni he is readable for someone in their family.

"And what does that mean?"

Azula hesitates. "I don't know."

She doesn't want to know.

Maybe she is looking for answers were there are no answers.

Or worse... looking for answers that she does not want to hear.

* * *

 **A/N:** Chapter Four hasn't been removed; the content is in this chapter. I've been revising this story for pacing issues, etc, and so chapters have been condensed and streamlined for clarity, which made them fall as three instead of four. All of Chapter Four's content is in here, and a brand new chapter is coming soon.


	4. The Visitant

**A/N:** [This _isn't_ a repost of Chapter Four; it's technically Chapter Five in the narrative. When I edited the earlier chapters for pacing, they were shortened and wound up falling at three chapters.]  
So, surprise! This story is back, and I apologize for the wait. I spent August going back to square one with many of my drafts, especially this fic, and with the help of red comment bubbles, deciding upon a solitary genre, research into properly writing mysteries, several rewritten outlines, and the ending of _Azathoth_ to guide me, I at last have a new chapter.

* * *

 **Chapter Four: The Visitant**

* * *

Iroh looks agonized.

"Azula, I do not mean to criticize you, but you are ruining a very nice ─"

" _I'm_ ruining the tea?" she snaps, her eyes flashing virulently. " _I'm_ not the one who put lemon into green tea and something else weird that probably shouldn't be consumed by humans. Honestly, this madness proves that being told I am not crazy by _you_ is not that comforting."

Iroh taps the pads of his fingers together patiently, although it is evident that he is being moderately tormented by the scraping of the spoon against the dented golden sugar container. Azula wishes it were easier to find satisfaction in that, but it simply is not when her conversation with _him_ was the most straightforward she has had in days.

General Iroh is the least enigmatic person Azula has spoken to in over a week. She cannot quite get that to sink in yet.

He attempts to explain, "It is a very expensive kind of mint and that is four spoonfuls which is certainly not healthy for ─"

"You know what else is not healthy? Me gouging my own eyes out with this spoon because _that_ out there is sickening." Azula jabs the sticky utensil towards the wide open patio, and her alleged family outside. _Laughing_ and consorting with the enemy.

They are interrupted before the conversation can continue by the horrid water girl, walking into the summer palace as if she _owns this place_. "I smell tea. Oh, this one is my favorite."

Katara grins at Iroh and Azula fills her mouth with her tea to keep from getting sick everywhere. _Well,_ don't they _just_ live in a _glorious_ utopia of love? Ugh. This tea is repugnantly sweet, but Azula refuses to show her disgust.

"It would be..." Azula mutters to herself as slowly all of the enemies and traitors she calls her family and friends trickle in. The princess's eyes dart around for a better place to hide, but she sighs and decides that she might as well quietly collect clues and answers instead of continuing her evasive maneuvers for the rest of the week.

Even if these people are utterly dreadful. The littlest alleged child, Kazumi, decides to curl up very close to Azula, like some kind of particularly clingy cat. She has been quietest, clinging to Ty Lee and Mai at all costs; she has been feeling ill, they say, and Azula just pats the girl on the head once or twice and tries to avoid inflicting any trauma.

The conversation shared at the cramped table is trivial and impersonal. Current events are no longer very sickening to Azula; she does not _like_ to accept the fact that the world she knew and loved is gone, but she has no other choice. She does make mental note of the politics, of anything she should pay particular attention to. Some of it is, in fact, relatively important to know when you have lost twelve years of world news.

Azula does not ask any questions, nor does she need to. Azula has maintained more difficult and much more entertaining ruses than one of the woman sitting among enemies with hair that touches her shoulders in a way that she never gets quite used to, with this child calmly on her lap instead of eyeing her nervously, with no one looking at her hands, her strange hands with new lines on them, as if they will be strangling or electrocuting someone at any moment.

However, the conversation shifts to one that Azula cannot just predatorily observe from the outside.

"I had a turtleduck as a pet once. You remember that," Zuko says bluntly, looking over at Azula. His face suddenly flickers with discomfort as he visibly remembers that Azula is displaced in time.

But she _does_ remember that. In fact, she most likely remembers it better than him, since it happened a much shorter time ago in the real world.

"Yes. It hated you so much," Azula comments with a smirk for added effect. No one seems surprised, which Azula finds very relieving.

"It didn't hate me," Zuko says.

"It hated being your pet. It used to scratch at the little nest you kept it in at night because it wanted out," Azula says very calmly as she sets down the tea that she is drinking despite the fact that it is much too sweet for her now. "But we weren't allowed to have pets, so it wasn't like you could go purchase a nice little... well, I'm uncertain what turtleducks actually like to live in. Probably not any type of captivity."

Zuko rubs his neck. "Okay, maybe it _did_ hate that. But I was twelve."

"Of course," Azula replies smoothly, and her eyes dart briefly to the Avatar. He looks unnerved and she likes that. "I don't blame you for wanting a pet, because I wanted one too. I wanted that turtleduck, to be honest. It was scratching at its cage, and so I let it out and took it that night."

Azula does not finish, and Zuko does not finish for her, as she was expecting. She looks around the table and sees that everyone is _waiting_ , as if this stupid little anecdote is actually interesting.

And so Azula shrugs one shoulder and finishes, "It didn't survive that night."

The quite loud sound that interrupts the story is the water bitch setting down her teacup with a smash, nearly breaking it, or perhaps the table. Katara only contains the tea from spilling everywhere with her bending.

Azula asks slowly, "Do you have a comment?"

"Yes. That I'm pretty sure this wasn't supposed to be a story about you murdering a little animal," Katara says and there is not true _hatred_ in her tone, which Azula was expecting. "It's not exactly tea break talk."

The princess subtly glances around again, continuing her test of just what her relationship with these people happens to be like. If they still fear her, or can't stomach her, or if Azula really has become soft. Mai is the only one who meets Azula's gaze before she looks away.

Zuko interrupts, "It wasn't with intent."

"It was," Azula protests, and she is aware of how it was _too loud_. "It completely was and it's sad you have convinced yourself that I am not cold blooded enough to kill your pet turtleduck. I mean, perhaps I was really just putting it out of its misery."

She sips her tea and hides her disgust at the sugar again. It was not with intent. She did not want to kill it; she just _wanted_ it. And Azula had been so disturbed by how she had accidentally let it die, how there was no way to reverse it. She thought for days, or maybe weeks, about what she might have been able to do to circumvent the death. It was distressing.

Azula could remember her young self realizing that mistakes could be permanent.

And that with her power, both figurative and literal, they could kill.

"Well," Zuko says after stammering out a few attempts to try to explain himself, "I definitely think you were upset."

"Oh, yes. Despite your emotional awareness of a particularly sentient rock, you did take me outside in the winter and tell me if we buried it under the ice we could de-thaw it and bring it back to life in springtime. Like phoenixes." Azula adds a small laugh.

Aang instantly removes the grim shroud Zuko and Azula's story caused by saying, "Well, it worked for me!"

The tea continues without a hitch.

[X]

Azula wants a vantage point to observe her enemies.

They all are suspicious; they all could make the slightest move that leads her to answers.

She turns down the offers of _beach games_ and is walking through the summer palace. Alone, without the tight guard of Zuko, Ty Lee or any other adversary, she can get a better look at the shadowy corridors. Nothing in this world smells _right_. Despite Azula's searching eyes, the palace has been meticulously painted over and covered up. Any memories of her childhood have been concealed and repressed, but there are nails poking out where portraits once were. Thickness in the paint where dents in the walls were not covered up as carefully as the rest.

The loud scuffling of feet tears Azula from her reverie, and the princess turns around to see Azusami with Izumi and the Avatar's ill-groomed boy. They are playing. Azusami very halfheartedly twists a brand new skipping rope, as Izumi leaps over it contentedly, saying the words to the rhyme with perfect rhythm.

Sullen, Azusami looks up at Azula, her alleged mother, and she mouths to the princess that she wants _something_ , but it certainly is not anything Azula wants to do with her time.

Azusami purses her lips the moment she sees that Azula is not going to help her, and she interrupts the somewhat familiar rhyme of, " _... made a mistake and kissed a spider-snake..."_

"Let's do something less boring if you guys are gonna make me twist this," Azusami says sharply in her high little voice. The other children both nod, oblivious to the clear displeasure. "Princess Azula took her fire, and put her father on an early pyre, and when her brother saw what she had done ─"

Azula disappears without giving a reaction, which is a confused semi-laugh.

It is almost cute that there is a rhyme about, and cuter that Azusami seems to think that Azula is supposed to deal with _her_ problems on top of her own. Azula has far more important worries, which should have been quite clear to Azusami during their _several_ discussions of the 'amnesia' that Azula must escape.

The princess at last finds a decent window after going up a few wooden stairs she does not remember. She sees her reflection in it and feels cold for a second. Her heart skips a beat as she remembers her desk, and how she had sweet wedding memories and stale portraits of a forgotten family mixed in with journals she had no time to read, but drawings that make her skin prickle.

This world is not free of it.

She takes a deep breath, watching her chest heave, gazing at a body that still makes her feel disoriented. It is not here; Azula might not even be here. She watches.

Azula has her mind fixated on the snapping back and forth between time that she has experienced. The transition, while eerie and uncanny, is so seamless that she is certain that there must be some form of causation that she just has not figured out yet.

Her chest feels as if stones are being set on it as she pushes further into this life and finds more questions than answers. She knows that no one in her alleged family is giving her any reliable information; Azula cannot trust any of them, despite the few chunks of decent information she got from her interrogation disguised as a date with Ty Lee.

Mai might be blunt, but Azula finds the idea of trusting her _hilarious_. Zuko is an idiot, but if this _is_ a trap crafted by humans and not spirits, he would have the most invested in it being successful. Ty Lee is easy to trick and Azula thinks that they would not allegedly be married, nor would the tears and expressions be so _genuine_ if Ty Lee did not have her tangled, trusting overly-loyal little self tied up in this.

Azula is still watching everyone else here as carefully as possible, their every move, each habit, each glance. Her best bet for honesty lies with the earthbender, the one most likely to feel guilt is clearly the Avatar, the one most likely to let her emotions cloud her judgment is the waterbender.

"Why are you staring at everybody so creepily?" asks a tiny but invasive voice behind her.

Oh, and her alleged children. Azula's fingers do twitch very slightly towards a few of the unfamiliar marks on her skin that she has examined. Marks that might just prove that the one who is perpetually tripping her might actually be _hers_. Or at least a very good...

A very good incarnation of...

Azula takes a very slow breath as she gazes directly at an overly glossy portrait, waiting, waiting for a few breaths, waiting for it to show up...

But the little girl is not omnipresent. Just annoying.

"I am not staring. I am thoughtfully gazing out of a window, which is an extremely..." Azula clears her throat and turns to face the child. "Have you come to speak to me for a particular reason? You look unhappy."

"I _am_ unhappy," Azusami growls, her eyes glinting yellow, and Azula takes a slow breath as she abandons her careful studying of potential escape routes.

"Why?" Azula inquires and finds that somehow, her patience is already tried.

"I don't care. It's not like it matters." Azusami sticks her flawless nose that she must have clearly gotten from Azula into the air. Azula shrugs.

"Good, I didn't want to deal with it anyway. You may thoughtfully gaze beside me if you are quiet."

"That isn't what you're supposed to say!" Azusami wails and Azula figured as much. "You were supposed to help me back there!"

"Well, what am I supposed to say, if you're such an expert on sulking little children?"

Azusami grits her teeth. "I hate them." Pause. "I asked if they would jump rope with me, and then they just let me twist the handle but wouldn't let me jump." Pause. "It's _my_ rope." Pause. "Were you never even a kid?" Pause. " _Do you understand_? They're being horrible!"

"Drown them." Azula takes a sharp breath. "Don't actually drown them. I was being sarcastic."

"I _know_."

"I find this to be extremely trivial and beneath my tier of concerns."

"I don't even know what your _tier of concerns_ is but I don't care about it and I want my jump rope back!" Azusami whines and Azula rolls her eyes, not stifling her gag.

"So, you are asking me to go outside and take a toy away from small children?"

"Yes!"

Azula rolls her eyes. "A tier of concerns is─"

"Ugh!"

Azula sighs. "Just go jump rope with them. I don't understand what is stopping you. Are you always so whiny?"

Azusami hisses again and Azula studies her own nails. If _she_ did that when she was a child, her father would probably break one of her bones. She is not certain if this is a sign of good parenting, dreadful parenting, or Azula not being her parent at all in the first place.

And then Azusami groans and stretches on the sofa as Azula glances up again, still waiting. She had felt mixed about this one, this child, but Azula had never equated Azusami with the...

"I haven't been entirely honest with you," Azusami finally says and Azula is not sure of the proper reply until Azusami throws the charred handle of a skipping rope onto the floor. "They let me twist the handle but they wouldn't let me jump. They drove me to this!"

Azula looks at the handle, and then the burnt remnant of rope that Azusami also tosses down.

"I'm hiding. Fix it before they find me!" Azusami blanches with horror, as if a burnt rope is a death sentence.

It is _bad_ parenting, Azula decides, that Azusami had no problem with rhymes about Princess Azula killing her father, but seems worried about a toy. The child should fear her and not run to her, begging to be nurtured.

Azula sighs airily, with a dismissive wave of her hand. "You can't put that back together. I can't help you. You just have to face the other children and whatever adult actually cares. I don't know."

"What do you mean I can't put it back together?" Azusami's lip trembles, and Azula thinks the little girl might _genuinely_ have thought that the rope could be fixed.

Like Azula thought she could bring back a dead turtleduck if she _tried hard enough_.

"I mean that I can't. That is destroyed completely, and no one can put it back together. Well, I don't know, maybe the Avatar can use his fancy energy bending, or perhaps there's a Skipping Rope Spirit that does that kind of thing, but I can't, even if I wanted to."

Azula crosses her arms as Azusami begins to sob, but before this situation can get more complicated, Fire Lord Zuko walks through the door, looking exasperated. Princess Azula's lips twitch with pleasure at the fact that the _ruler of a country_ is currently designated to reprimanding a child for throwing a fit about skipping rope.

"Are you parenting?" Zuko asks with an expression Azula ought to burn off.

"Well, yes, but I'm parenting about as well as you rule a country. I'm uncertain what to do about this ridiculous and petty concern, but, perhaps we should give her a balanced trial, have her apologize kindly to her friends and then we can go get cinnamon ice." Azula smirks at the absurdity.

Zuko shrugs, as if that is some kind of _proper legal process_ and not a joke about how soft he is. "That sounds a lot like what I gave _you_ back when there was a pretty heated debate about how to deal with your life."

"I had a balanced trial, apologized kindly to my friends and then all the world leaders and I went out to get cinnamon ice? That sounds like one for the history books."

Zuko opens his mouth, but only a sigh comes out.

Azula feels quite smug.

[X]

At dusk, Azula walks into the one dimly lit room not filled with loud enemies and rowdy children. She expects solitude, but instead finds her alleged wife sitting on the bare floor, her legs bent unnaturally despite her relaxed posture, poking at the skipping rope that Azusami abandoned.

"How does it end?" Azula asks sweetly and Ty Lee nearly breaks her legs with the force of her flinch. The purr of satisfaction in Azula's stomach is much more muted than it has been over the past few days. Perhaps she is getting bored of being allowed the freedom to fuck with everyone she despises and be treated like a princess instead of a criminally insane charity case.

"How does what end?" Ty Lee inquires as she uncrosses her legs, flashing _everyone_ briefly. Alright, the room is empty save for Azula, but despite the _alleged_ prefix, there is a twisting sensation within Azula about that.

"The skipping rope rhyme about me," Azula finishes as she walks to sit across the table from Ty Lee on a tatami mat. " _Princess Azula took her fire_..."

Ty Lee snorts in laughter about that one. "Ugh. _That_ one? Isn't it just a replacement about the... hmm... some other person? I used to know it when I was a kid but I forget it now. The names and rhymes just changed around."

"So, _Princess Azula took her fire, and put her father on an early pyre, and when her brother saw what she had done_ ─"

"No, no," Ty Lee interrupts and Azula takes a sharp breath to restrain herself. "That's the nicer one. _Princess Azula took her fire, and put her mother on an early pyre. After she saw what she had done, her brother put her on the run. Princess Azula got away, and no one's seen her to this day."_

Azula tries to conceal the chill on her skin in the hot night. Ty Lee laughs as if it is not unsettling, as if Azula is not now questioning reality yet again. Or questioning it even more. She did drown, and she _knows that_ she drowned, no matter what people keep saying.

"How funny," Azula says primly and Ty Lee leans back.

"Loosen up, won't you? If this isn't real, why do you even care? And if it is..." Ty Lee doesn't have much more to add to her argument as she toys with the gilded handle silently.

Azula gazes at her for a moment, wondering if her answers would be easier to take by breaking fingers or by instigating kisses. She just knows that this is a _very_ impressive maze, whether it is made by spirits or humans. It is one that Azula is beginning to think is not meant to be solved.

"You seem bound to whatever silence Mai and Zuko are, if our little date meant anything. And your very deliberate avoidance of me," Azula purrs as she picks up some of the frayed rope. "But perhaps you can tell me about the journal in my desk. Did I ever tell you about the Visitor?"

"I thought it was the Visitant," Ty Lee says very quickly and Azula cannot hide the flash in her golden eyes.

Azula licks her lips and Ty Lee lightly shakes her head, as if this is not abnormal. But Azula has never told her about the Visitant, nor anyone, and that implies either that Azula's mind makes some very elaborate deep dreams, spirits are careless in their designs, or Ty Lee cannot watch her mouth.

To be honest, while the last one is the most realistic, all of them make sense.

"Yes, the Visitant. I misspoke," Azula says slowly, softly. She locks eyes with Ty Lee and refuses to peel them away. Ty Lee does not avert her eyes, nor do her cheeks light ablaze with shame as they have so frequently when Azula corners her. "I haven't seen it."

"That's good," Ty Lee says with a smile. It is a smile that Azula very, very easily reads; it is a smile that Ty Lee wears like visible armor. "I was most concerned about that. It never went away."

Azula wants to quiz Ty Lee further, but she realizes, now that the chill of the Visitant is in her bones, that this might very well be in her head. She could just be asking herself, or asking something more sinister, something that knows her, something that is much more prepared.

It is quite comforting, to be honest. If this is a dream...

[X]

In the dead of the sweltering night, Azula is seeking it out. Or seeking herself out. One or the other, either way, she is wandering the halls again as the fresh paper windows with the designs that might as well belong to strangers stare at her from the shadows.

She has the sensation of being followed, but anyone would in a dark, eerie place like this. It is one she has picked up from military training, one she has developed from very natural and earned paranoia that people seem to call _illness_ but is logical.

Behind her, real footsteps. They feel like they belong to the little Azusami, the one who burnt the skipping rope, the one with the wicked golden gleam in her eyes, the one who trips Azula at the heels.

But, slowly, Azula allows her gaze to ride and lock with the mirror. She wants it to be her head, she wants it to be something that she can confront, because getting answers from these stick figures of her imagination is like drawing blood from a stone.

If there were to be an answer, it would be in that form.

In the asylum, she gave no straight answers, and no one truly wanted them. No one wanted to die. That did not mean that people did not try, but Azula has always known that it had to do with Zuko trying desperately to throw all he could at her and hope for the best.

Pointless waste of time and resources, Azula knows.

Azula gave a few quiet confessions that perhaps she can remember.

* * *

 _An extremely pathetic excuse for a healer and a young woman who is quite interested in the effects of her actions. Zuko must be so thrilled about Azula confessing such a personal truth. Perhaps she at last wants to be healed and then become his... puppy-cat or something._

 _The patient is seeing double, but that doesn't stop her gaze at the healer now beginning to flounder, and Azula has only slurred out two words through the drugs. Not bad. She might be able to get out of this without ripping out some of her own skin with her fingernails, although that is fairly entertaining and breaks the monotony._

 _"A manifestation, of sorts? Something you tried to control?" He clears his throat._

 _Silence. That does not even merit a response, particularly with the effort it even takes to slur through fucking bending suppressants. Because this is so very urgent that Azula has revealed the most enticing chunk of information._

 _"A benign Visitant? You said you weren't surprised that the, uh, ghost, is... Well, it seems like a maternal replacement, if it's been around since you were a little girl."_

 _"Oh, wow, how impressive. You are so original. I am extremely impressed at your ingenuity. No one has ever suggested that I just wanted a mommy who loved me before."_

 _Silence. He shifts his weight uncomfortably._

 _"I'm only interested in the fact that you say it isn't a new development." He is only interested in the fact that Zuko thinks he has struck gold, and will share that with whoever finishes vivisecting the mad girl._

 _Silence._

 _"You like to just give fragmented answers from time to time, don't you? None of them are ever going to lead to anything." A man who is significantly smarter than Zuko._

 _But that's not hard._

* * *

Azula is in the summer palace. Azula is in her late twenties and a mother of two. Azula is no longer forced through every restraint and drug known to man, and Zuko would probably have a few invented if he had to, but she is more imprisoned than she has ever been before.

The feeling in her heart is identical to a child peeking under their bed and around their room at night, half expecting the ghost to be there. Only Azula's decided to become more and more real, instead of less and less like most people.

Her eyes land on the glossy, moonlit door on the other side of the room. She can see right behind her as she waits, but nothing comes.

She adjusts the silk blanket around her shoulders and blinks for a few seconds too long. There is nothing behind her, not even a flicker or a trick of her tired eyes and taxed mind. Perhaps _not_ being stalked is proof of spirit interference, or maybe it just makes the riddle more complex.

But, as she thinks that, she does realize it. She just realizes that the Visitant looks more like herself than her actual reflection.

Azula does not know if it will be there when she turns, and so she remains frozen. No words; the Visitant is watching quite calmly, cold, quiet. It is a mostly undressed phantom and a vestige of a forgotten young woman who might have drowned. Who might not have.

Who knows?

Azula has no questions now, nor does she know how to ask them.

"I'm done here," Azula says, meeting her own eyes, and then the much more familiar ones of the Visitant, and then meeting her own eyes again. Perhaps if she just says it... if she could conjure her ghost, can't she cancel this?

"Then leave." It is a vague whisper, not quite distinct. "Why won't you? There are an awful lot of doors that aren't locked, or are you too scared to see what's past the beach?"

"Not this house, this life," Azula hisses.

The shrug is absolutely that of a teenager. "Leaving the house is easier and does the same thing. Or, if you _really_ would rather be drowning, the ocean is right there. Through the door."

Azula glances over her shoulder and adjusts the silk blanket draped over her shoulders like a shawl. The door is quite tempting, even if her gut instinct tells her it is a bad idea. Unless the Visitant is actually some _manifestation_ of her _wiser instincts_ like shrinks suggest.

"I am aware of that." _I just tried not to think about it. Or forgot. I forgot. Yes, I forgot because of the noise and distractions and clearly interference from these slimy traitors._

"And?" The hand on her shoulder is extremely corporeal, despite being ice cold. "And you're still looking at a painting acting like an old lady."

The hot breath on her neck makes her flinch and twist around, as the Visitant moves to either kiss Azula, bite her neck or force her to go through that door. The blanket hitting the floor as Azula reaches out, grabs her own arm, and her eyes hurt when the adjust to a figure that is not the Visitant.

"It's really hot in here, huh?" Ty Lee whispers so _sweetly_ as her arm tenses under Azula's grip. But she does not try to break free. "I'm going outside for a minute, if you want to come. I know things are weird and bad and awkward, but it's colder out and I swear I won't say anything. I won't even talk about how the phases of the moon are totally why everyone here is having nightmares."

Azula examines her alleged wife, watches those cute fox-deer eyes look at the same door that the Visitant was fixated on. Sees Ty Lee innocently bat her eyelashes as her foot moves towards it, and the princess releases her tight grip on whatever _that_ is.

Because _that_ is not her awful ex girlfriend.

Heart pounding, she locks herself in her bedroom and pretends that she can hide forever.


	5. The Itinerary

**Chapter Five: The Itinerary  
**

* * *

Azula wakes and thinks she is screaming, but it is only an unheard whimper.

It seems to be normal for her, and it has been since before Zuko decided to have her head vivisected. She used to wake every single morning and most nights with those pained shrieks, calling her father's name but it was really just a whisper that he would never hear from across the palace. Her skin would be sticky with cold sweat and her head would ache from her clenched jaw, and, perhaps, her lower lip bleeding just a tiny bit.

Her nightmare was real. No, the nightmare she had last night might have been in her sleep or close to it, but the Visitant was very real, and Azula has seen it in that form before. She has. Mother, self, Ty Lee, mother, self, father, self, self, self, mother...

Never anyone else. She remembers one devoured shrink who tried to tell her about a _subconscious urge_ that was her _conscience_. Laughable. That it embodied every repressed thought and Azula will deny that until she dies because the Visitant is hers alone to face.

Oh, much better than the constant theories of repression making her snap were the ones about her mother. It was easy and truer than some of the absurd theories. The... woman this time, yes, a woman, told her that her jealousy led not just to Zuko and mother... which is very questionable, albeit Azula did envy Zuko for other reasons. Her jealousy led her to vie for her father's affections, to have what he felt for her.

Which was honestly absurd that Azula gave an answer.

* * *

 _Bluntly, "You've got that the other way around. She wishes she was me. Her life ended the day I was born, and she never hesitated from reminding me. I didn't need to dispose of her for my father's affections because he never he never hesitated from reminding me either. Seeing as I know my brother will be thrilled to get this transcript, while she so indirectly yelled at him about me, he was honest and told me that the last time they fucked was when I was conceived."_

 _"That sounds exactly like what I've been describing."_

 _"I think you're describing my brother and trying to apply it to me because that's what he asked for. I have never met a man so obsessed with mothers as he was. He wanted my mother of course, but instead of screwing her he accidentally killed her. Zuko, tell me the moment our father looked at you with only disappointment in his eyes. Or does this go only one way?"_

 _"And that is your sibling rivalry. So you think he killed her?"_

 _"We're not talking about me. Seeing as you're so excited about your familiar theories, I think we should discuss my brother. My dear brother who was so obsessed with me and how much better I was is why I'm here, and why my father is tortured. He likes it. You think you're writing this down for him because he wants to help me? No, oh no, no..."_

 _"This isn't written ─"_

 _"I may rarely be lucid and perpetually drugged but it's so blatant he could figure it out. She used to call him Leaps and Bounds because he could never walk quietly."_

 _And, despite the prodding of Zuko's next expendable interrogator, Azula says no more._

* * *

Azula chews on her fingernail as she has a realization. She has been avoiding Zuko because he has been trying to convince her that she _serves_ him, but he is the easiest person to manipulate Azula has ever met. He has this beautiful misguided sympathy in his fool's paradise and he thought she was such a fragile little thing that if only he could get to cry and confess the complex of the week he would rescue.

Ty Lee is too troubling. Ty Lee is cracking but Azula has emotional interference; the Visitant proves that. Zuko is worth a try. Uncle has an alleged conscience and the look in his eyes the day he helped her inside might be usable if Azula uses Zuko. The blind girl is blunt and open, so perhaps she could be goaded. The waterbender has a temper and a self righteousness that could go either way. The Avatar pities her more than her brother.

Zuko thought taking her here would make her play along.

But he just handed her all of the suspects to interrogate on a gilded platter.

She smirks and tears off the rest of her broken nail with her teeth.

[X]

Azula intrudes on the noisy breakfast after grooming herself into a thousand different potential looks. She is not certain what to do with many of her features, and she wanted to avoid exploring it at all costs, but Azula did eventually give in to her vanity.

And now, a nightmare dressed like a daydream, Azula enters the room and all eyes are on her despite Uncle being halfway through a story. Azula conceals her sadistic pleasure and takes a sugary sweet breath in.

Zuko and his friends wait patiently, some more than others.

"I would like to participate in your pointless exploits," Azula declares innocently and Zuko cocks an eyebrow at her. No one else's expressions are any more encouraging, but Azula does not care. "They look like... fun. We must have an itinerary."

"Nope," the Avatar says as if that is a good thing. He grins and Azula gives herself a brief few seconds of violent fantasy before moving on.

"Well, I will take the liberty of drafting one," Azula purrs with a swift bat of her eyelashes.

"We're on vacation," the waterbender states, looking unimpressed by Azula's change of heart, and Azula shoots her brother a carefully engineered glance.

It works. It works and Azula has to suppress a victorious smile.

"It might be nice to have an itinerary. I mean, organization is helpful in all situations," Zuko says and his friends halfheartedly agree. "So, whatever you want to do, or something."

Azula smirks and feels a tiny twinge of pride within herself. Oh yes, she has certainly figured out how to play them all and it pleases her. She resigns herself to her temporary bedroom and finds paper and ink.

The best choice is to separate them, but that will not be her decision. She chews on her lower lip as she focuses on figuring out how she might be able to accomplish that. Someone raps on her door as she is trying to focus on her expert way to slice up the group into small, easy to exploit chunks.

The princess mutters something about coming in, and regardless, she suddenly is face to face with the Avatar. How magnificent.

"So, I have some ideas for what everybody wants to do. Katara and Toph were going to go into town for a while, and that's happening soon. Uh, oh! Azusami says she wants to make dried flowers and I love crafts."

 _You're a grown man_ , Azula wants to comment but she holds her tongue and murmurs, "Uh huh."

"And Kazumi is allowed to go swimming if she has supervision and so that's happening later when it's less bright and sunny out," Aang continues calmly and Azula is unnerved by his collected, composed tone.

"Those sound fine," Azula forces herself to say, even though the words make her virulently queasy. She _knows_ she has to distract her prey with the dazzling nature of their own desires, but it almost is not worth agreeing with these horrid people.

Aang makes a discomfited face and Azula's eyes drift up to fixate on him. Now he looks twice as uncomfortable, and Azula feels a satisfied purring within her.

"Are you doing okay?"Aang asks quietly and Azula barely represses a derisive laugh. "You seem a bit, uh, unhinged."

"That is none of your business, Avatar," Azula says sweetly before finishing the last smooth, shiny character on her itinerary of interrogations.

Aang frowns faintly.

[X]

The first disguised interrogation session of Azula's is shopping in town for a new jump rope and presumably tacky seashell necklaces. Neither Katara nor Toph seem to be thrilled about a shopping day, and so Azula is quite perplexed as to why they are doing it in the first place, but she does not question their decisions as she prepares to vivisect them for information.

"Wait!" shrieks a pretty, girlish voice as Azula watches the water girl check her stupid leather purse ten times before they are able to leave. Toph seems to have no patience either, but she does nothing to stop the delay; Azula does everything in her power to keep from throttling the water whore with burning hands.

"You have all of your things. Go," Azula snarls as she hears the light footsteps pattering across the stone floors. She grabs Katara's tan arm and the water whore seems about to slap her across the face before it is too late, Ty Lee is at the door, wiggling into her shoes, and Azula releases Katara with a defeated sigh.

How magnificent. Azula has no doubts that Ty Lee is accompanying them to keep an eye on her alleged wife. Because Azula trusts these people less and less every single day.

The quartet walks along the sandy streets of overly cheery tourists, and Azula's eyes flicker around, scanning her surroundings for any anomalies that she might be able to notice. There has to be _something_ in this world that gives her another hint; it would be absurd if there was not.

"Ooo, jewelry!" Ty Lee says, her eyes lighting up, glimmering the same way that the gems she is transfixed by do. "Azula, this is exactly your favorite color!"

Azula gently bites her lower lip as she sees the smooth silver and feels a slight chill. She must have told Ty Lee at some point, of course. Ty Lee is not a malevolent hallucination and Azula refuses to believe that, even if her pulse pounds whenever her alleged wife does something even mildly suspicious.

It strikes Azula as odd that she suddenly wants this world to be real, suddenly craves the explanation of time travel or spirits. Because last night's encounter with the Visitant will not leave her alone.

"Yes. It's an attractive color. I thought we were getting a skipping rope," Azula says icily and Ty Lee pouts at her like a little puppy-koala. "You can jewelry shop. I will..." She can feel every muscle in her body tense as she forces the smooth words out. "I will go catch up with our... friends."

Ty Lee stares at her for a minute, scrutinizing Azula but of course too much of an airhead to analyze a person beyond if their clothing is last season. She will be most pleased with her shopping, Azula is certain, no matter how _high and mighty_ this twenty-eight year old Ty Lee is. Princess Azula smiles faintly, encouragingly at the infuriatingly concerned circus freak and Ty Lee nods sharply like a little bird.

Azula strides away, along the pier that looks _almost_ as it did over a decade ago, and stops at the toy shop that is painted such an ugly shade of red. Toph looks a cross between jaded and about to crush the rocks that compose the street, and so Azula walks to her first; Katara is _genuinely_ examining the jump ropes as if they are more complicated than a piece of string with two handles adhered to it.

"So, this is a dreadful outing. Why did you come?" Azula purrs, leaning against the wall. Her lips curl into a small snarl of distaste at the hideous stuffed animals.

"Because everyone in that house is driving me insane. Oh, and there's that weird ice cream stuff you can only get in the Fire Nation. It's good."

"Right." Azula hesitates and studies her nails. Toph's posture is comfortable and open, as Azula imagines it must often be; her personality exudes overconfidence. Azula is not certain if that has to do with their relationship or if it is just the default.

"And you are on this _dreadful outing_ too," Toph remarks with a sardonic snooty imitation of Azula's tone and a mocking twitch of her eyebrow. "You wanted to join in on our games?"

"But don't I _always_?" Azula asks in the most ambiguous way she can manage.

Toph snorts. "Right. Nah, I don't blame you for bitching nonstop about this trip, as obnoxious as your _whining_ is. Everybody hates a _family reunion_. I only came for the weird Fire Nation ice cream and for front row seats for how the _happy fun time_ explodes this year."

"Well, it's inevitable, isn't it?" Azula comments cavalierly as she makes mental note of said _explosion_. Clearly, life is far from the paradise Zuko has deluded himself into believing it is. "I'm hoping for an eel-shark attack, personally."

"I could go for a fist fight like last year. That was fun. Oh, hey, there's a betting pool on that."

"On who will win a fist fight? I bet entirely on my brother being beaten until he cries."

"Well, fist fight is one of the bets. But I've got cheating spouse revelation, deep personal secret being revealed, wing of the house burning down, ridiculous fight about beach towels that somehow turns into something way more dramatic..."

"Huh." Azula enjoys this news. "Well, I'm going for the safe bet of deep personal secret being revealed."

She smirks; that is a guaranteed win. Toph shrugs, yawns and before she can take the bet, they are interrupted by Ty Lee walking through the door. Azula rolls her eyes.

"Trouble in paradise, Princess Trustworthy? My money is on cheating spouse revelation and that is not the heartbeat of adorable lovers." Toph waggles her eyebrows and Azula suppresses a sigh.

"That accusation is simply absurd." Azula stands and strides across the room to seize one of the jump ropes and escape as quickly as she can.

[X]

The three women settle at lunch, although Toph has decided on cold cinnamon ice and hard liquor. It is a combination Azula cannot argue with, although Azula is the type to avoid anything sweet that could jeopardize her training and who only likes wine with her dinner.

They sit on the outside section of the restaurant, which was quickly vacated and granted to them and them alone. The ocean laps fiercely at the boardwalk below as Azula listens carefully to useless conversation.

Katara keeps trying to uphold small talk to little avail, Toph seems more apathetic than Mai and Ty Lee is shaking like a leaf. Azula's thoughts are exclusively on the fact that there are clearly past rifts between her brother, his family and his friends, and Azula thinks that may be of use in the future.

All the same, she has no more information about her own situation.

"I suppose, hm, that wine doesn't sound awful," Azula murmurs aloud as she studies the menu.

The resonating silence and Ty Lee's horrified expression make Azula mildly uncomfortable. It feels as if Azula is some kind of _alcoholic_ and they are shocked that she would even suggest drinking a small glass of rice wine.

"You sure?" Ty Lee squeaks feebly, blushing bright red as she looks to Azula for rescue. Azula sees the glimmer of true fear in those _innocent_ eyes and realizes that she must have somehow broken character.

Katara squints; she looks genuinely _baffled_. It would be cute if Azula was not trying to figure out how to remedy the accidental crack in her facade.

"Should I not?" Azula has no idea what to say, and that is a feeling she is not remotely used to.

"Did you...?" Katara averts her eyes and chews uncomfortably on her lower lip.

"She's just going to have some iced tea, right, right?" Ty Lee blinks much too quickly and Azula wants to shove her off of the guard rail into the ocean below.

"Of course," Azula says softly, leaning back and hoping this moment will be forgotten.

As if being this _new Azula_ were not hard enough.

[X]

Azula has not dried flowers since she was a little girl.

But later that afternoon, after Azula gifted the new jump rope to her daughter and attempted to track down Ty Lee to ask about the wine incident in vain, she is doing so.

Azusami is intently focused on the work, the precision of her small hands causing a strange sensation inside of Azula. Pride? Relief? She has not experienced it before. Mai watches from afar, pretending to be interested in her book, but Azula can tell that her eyes are the same as Ty Lee's forced accompaniment on the shopping trip.

Azula should have known that Zuko would not let her off that easily.

The tall Avatar sits at the table, tenderly trying to maintain the bubble of ignorance he must think children should live within. Azula strongly disagrees. Her parents never bothered to shield her from the real world, and she became powerful because of it.

"I don't like the color of these," Azusami remarks snippily, her little nose wrinkled in disgust. "Ugh. They're all so ugly. And this picture is dumb."

"You could paint them," the Avatar suggests in a patient _paternal_ voice that makes Azula roll her eyes and gag. "There's probably paint around here somewhere, right?"

He looks so _adult_ , but so does everyone. Azula cannot get over the disorientation she feels every time she looks at these familiar people but sees distorted versions of them. _Matured_ versions. It is somehow worse than how disturbing her own body is to her.

But they all act the same as always. Azula does not know how she could have possibly changed so much when no one else has.

"I dunno," Azusami murmurs as she looks at the flowers that she is trying to make into a picture on the thick, expensive parchment. "I don't really like painting that much."

"Why are you looking at me so nervously when you say that?" Azula demands before realizing the Avatar's presence. She shrugs it off, however, since he is preoccupied with trying to find a solution to Azusami's problem.

"Cos, I, huh." Azusami buries her face in her hands and Azula feels her breath become shallow. "Just 'cos it's... 'cos my grandmother thinks I'm good at it and buys me paint and I really should be doing other things and stuff because painting is a waste of time..."

Azula leans back, trying futilely to avoid the hollowness in her stomach. Azusami sits with dried flowers and her hair tied too loosely and looks at Azula with apprehension and admiration. It makes Azula's skin prickle, because Azusami looks exactly like Azula...

And Azula is in the exact position of Ozai.

 _Exact_. Azusami gazes at her in the same way. Looks too similar.

"I..." Azula does not know the proper words because no one ever said them to her. She tries to quickly think of what she might have wanted to hear instead of her father's callous remarks. "I have no problem with you pursuing whatever hobbies and activities that interest you."

Azusami now squints at her as if she has turned bright green.

"But you..." Azusami looks away and starts working with the flowers she declared hatred for mere moments ago.

"What did I do?" Azula snaps fiercely and the Avatar's foot twitches forward, prepared to intervene.

"You burned them that one time but it's nothing because I'm good at _so many things_ and she was probably wrong anyway and stuff..."

Azula blinks and only just pieces together who _she_ is. _My_ grandmother, Azusami says, and Azula has a very strong feeling that she is not talking about Ty Lee's mother.

"Oh." Even if Azula were not focused on avoiding breaking character in front of Aang, she would not have a response.

Azusami was so loving, eerily so, and so _eager_ to accept Azula into her life despite being old enough to understand the amnesia.

But Azula does begin to think about those strange sentences.

 _Sometimes we have problems and everybody fights but that's how all families are._

 _But everybody in this family is totally crazy._

 _You have episodes. Cry. Can't breathe. Can't put on shoes. Shaking. Won't respond to people._

 _And sometimes yell at me but don't mean it and so it's okay._

Azula maintains her calm breath, suppresses her spiraling nausea and wishes she had the skills to do something right now. All she can do is gaze at the flowers she was nimbly helping with and force herself to believe that such a degrading act of subservience to a child must be good parenting.

"I found some stain that might be nice. It's _not paint_ ," Aang says reassuringly in his perturbing deep voice. "What color do you like best, 'sami?"

The little girl smiles with a sparkle in her eyes as if she had not just felt such shame about whatever her past is with Ursa.

"Blue," the little girl chirps.

Azula continues grooming the flowers in silence.

[X]

Mai looks up at Azula after the princess excuses herself from the arts and crafts.

"You're actually giving it a shot. I'm sort of impressed." Mai shrugs and leans back.

"I'm sort of impressed that you care enough to be one of Zuko's spies," Azula purrs in response. "I like your apathy, I suppose. It's refreshing compared to the people trying to coddle me. But... do tell me when you somehow started to _care about me_."

Mai averts her eyes and makes a quiet sighing sound. "It's been a long time. You know that. I know that. Please get over it. I'm on your side now. Mostly."

That is not a satisfactory answer for Azula, because the princess just _knows_ it is meant to deflect attention from the real root of problems. Mai must have reason for partaking in whatever game Zuko has been playing since Azula woke in that hospital.

"You know what you do?" Azula remarks thoughtfully as she stares directly at Mai. "You hold awful grudges even though you pretend to be so apathetic. Eventually it _all bursts_ , though. You can't contain that forever and I want to know exactly how your loathing of me ended."

Mai rolls her eyes. "That was a long time ago."

"Not to me," Azula replies without missing a beat.

Mai protests flatly, "I'm not the only one who holds grudges."

"We're discussing you, not me or anyone else."

"Just shut up." Mai rolls her eyes yet again. Azula kind of wants to stab them out with her own knives.

"Is any of this real?" Azula laughs as if their attempts only amuse her, and ignores the nasty feeling in her chest of fear eating her alive.

"Yes. It is. And I think you should wake up before it's too late."

"Before it's... before it's _what_?" Azula furrows her brow and suddenly pays attention to her alleged sister-in-law.

Mai shrugs."I had a grudge, I didn't care what happened to you. Whatever. It obviously faded eventually. There wasn't any cute reunion or teary apologies. It just got too old for me to give a fuck anymore."

"So you did care?"

"Sure. Whatever you want."

"Stop it. I hate you; you have every right to hate me." Azula's voice cracks and she wants to scream.

"I think I have every right to have hated you after all you did."

"Hmm. I think I have every right to hate you because you did the worst thing anyone can do to someone else."

"Yeah, you should wake up and realize that there are way worse things to do to someone than betrayal or whatever you're pissed about. You ever think maybe you wanted to forget something? Maybe this isn't some cruel trick everybody else is doing to you, but maybe there was something that happened to you bad enough to _want_ to be your sixteen year old self again?"

"That's grounded in reality. Tell me what happened. Or, tell me what _supposedly_ happened."

"I don't know, to be honest. But I think that you have an awful habit of blaming everybody but yourself for what happens to you."

"That's a lie."

"Whatever." Mai shrugs and stands up. She walks away from her watchtower sofa and disappears into the Summer Palace.

She had never been quite _kind_ , but right now Azula thinks Mai might be losing patience.

Azula thinks many people might be losing patience.

And she can only hope that is a good thing.

Azula gazes after her, her chest constricting with the knowledge that _yes_ , at least Mai knows more than she is letting on. Azula is _right_ about the fact that she is being tricked and Mai has just _proven_ it, no matter how much she pretends that Azula is just delusional.

[X]

Late that evening, still rattled from her conversation with Mai, Azula lights several fresh candles in archaic holders, and tries to ignore the pungent odor of wax. She needs to focus, to meditate. Dark shadows dance among the blue tint of the room as Azula closes her eyes and

"So, Kazumi and Mai are going out to the beach because it's dark out. Oh, and Aang and Katara have their little ones. So cute! It's going to be amazing. I love beaches at nighttime..." Ty Lee prattles on for longer as Azula stops listening.

That was surprisingly easy.

"Fine," Azula says, standing and walking through the house.

She feels a chill where she recalls the Visitant taunting her last night, telling her to walk through the door, or to drown herself in the ocean if that was what she preferred. Azula combs her fingers through her hair and adjusts her appearance in her reflection on the door before walking out onto the cold sand.

Zuko seems good with Kazumi, and Mai is with her and their Izumi. Azula cannot contain the jealousy that overwhelms her; Zuko and Mai seem to be such _fantastic_ parents to _Azula's_ child.

But, Azula consoles herself with, perhaps that is because they are actually Mai and Zuko's children and this is simply a part in the charade that they are attempting. Azula sees through this facade and thinks that, no matter what, it is more illusion than truth.

"Let's walk up further," Azula breathes to Ty Lee. She gives a look and a melodically sensual cadence to her words. It is remembered, of course, as how Azula used to charm Ty Lee right into her arms no matter what the princess did.

Until Ty Lee decided to betray and chi-block her, of course.

Azula walks with her up the beach. They are still on their private land, and are close enough to hear the sounds of familial night swim play time. Ugh. Azula could not be more disgusted by that idea if she tried.

"Are you getting me alone to kill me?" Ty Lee asks with a weak smile.

"Maybe," Azula purrs with a smirk of sexy superiority. "You know you'd love it either way."

Ty Lee rolls her eyes and giggles. "Shut up."

"Mmmm. Don't tell me that. Come on and be my pet. You know you want to," Azula says in a voice like artificial sugar. She takes Ty Lee's hand and pulls her closer, watching how the skin on skin contact electrifies Ty Lee against her will.

Despite all of the people in this house Azula is trying to squeeze answers out of, she still does think Ty Lee might hold more than one key to this abysmal puzzle. Even if it is solely because of how easy to manipulate Ty Lee is.

Azula stands on the dunes, the reeds tickling her ankles as she gazes at the infinite crystal stars reflected in the dark ocean.

"Do you want to talk?" Ty Lee asks quietly, taking Azula's hand and rubbing the webbing of her left finger with her thumb. "There's a lot to say."

"Or so you assume," Azula retorts, concealing how many questions she has.

She wants to know about the wine incident, but she also wants to pretend that it does not matter at all to her.

All of them are about Azusami. All of them are about the fact that her daughter makes Azula feel more like Ozai than anyone ever has in her childhood, imprisonment or other variety of abuses. The question she wants to ask is, _Have I hurt them?_ or something else _weak_ , but she restrains herself.

It is a pointless venture, since Azula needs to _get out_ of here as quickly as possible.

Or maybe they would discuss the cryptic answers Mai gave that have been driving Azula insane for the entire afternoon and evening.

"No, I'd like to have our own _night swim_ not interrupted by squealing, dirty children," Azula says icily, twisting one finger in her hair and watching Ty Lee lose her footing.

It _is_ easy to use Ty Lee now that Azula is beginning to figure out this world.

Azula walks towards the roaring ocean without allowing another word of discussion.

Ty Lee does not protest, dashing after Azula, her shoulders shaking with silent giggles.

"You're gonna get so cold," Ty Lee laughs as she runs through the sea spray. The waves roll towards them and Azula feels at _ease_ for the first time, because she has done this before and it is so familiar to her.

Azula remembers that night on Ember Island. The one in which they had to confront that perhaps their psuedo-relationship on the down low may be more serious than they wanted it to be. That Azula wanted to do those things to Ty Lee that the boys wanted to do and it made everything more complex.

They secluded themselves to the beach, so that no one could report back to Ozai about it.

And then the sound of the waves hid the sound of their moans.

"Do you remember this?" Azula asks as she steps into the water and pushes against the resistance as she follows Ty Lee. "You have to."

"That is such a pathetic sexy voice." Ty Lee shakes her head, but she cannot hide her pink cheeks.

"Oh, no it's not. You are in denial," Azula sings as she finally catches up and, without hesitation nor the permission of her higher judgment, tackles that woman into the water. Ty Lee shrieks, laughing, laughing like an idiot who doesn't remember their situation.

The waves either increase in strength or the girls drift off further from shore. Ty Lee partially stands, her clothes soaked through and not hiding a thing. Azula presumes she looks the same, but she does not want to stare at her body more than she has to, even if she is significantly hotter than she was in the asylum.

Azula pushes herself at Ty Lee in the icy waves before her prey can come to her senses. Because Azula _has her_ right now and can do whatever she wants; Azula refuses to let Ty Lee whine about being a _good person_.

Ty Lee does not put up resistance as Azula pushes her down to the sand and begin to tear at her shirt. It opens so easily and Azula's eyes flicker up and down her alleged wife's body. With a cocky smile, Ty Lee leans back and Azula's fingertips trail over the abdomen she has never felt, despite it belonging to a girl she has touched in every place.

Her sharp fingernails trail down, down and move to liberate Ty Lee further, because nothing can stop Azula now from pressing her lips down forcefully against her clavicle, from hooking her fingers around Ty Lee without any chance of release.

Ty Lee responds, but it is not in her _high and mighty_ refusal. No, she kisses Azula and bites down on her lip, dragging her further into the damp sand. Their soaking clothes stop being a problem as they peel any garments from each other's skin and are close to naked, _so close_ that Azula hurts in a number of demanding ways.

Azula straddles her as she feels the hands on her, hands _so desperate_ to please her like long, long ago in a time they both might as well have forgotten. The saltwater in Azula's hair drips down onto Ty Lee's skin and rolls along her breasts. And Ty Lee pulls Azula into another very needy kiss.

The touching does not go very far, mostly because Azula is quickly running out of things she actually knows how to do other than the uncomfortable attempts at _true_ sex between them in their experimental youth. Azula tries to hide it as the heat within her escalates and Ty Lee digs her fingernails deeper into Azula's skin.

Azula kisses her and Ty Lee moans melodically into her mouth and Azula forgets that she is supposed to be tricking this girl into giving Azula answers. She forgets everything but the waves splashing against them, trying to freeze their fire or knock them down, and the sensations that make even the power of the ocean incapable of doing so.

Yes, that is paradise. _That_ is what Ty Lee should be using to coerce Azula into playing along with them.

Azula begins to move further down, touching her lips to Ty Lee's breasts and then further, further, before she loses her balance and Ty Lee begins to realize what they are doing and pull away. Before Azula can drag Ty Lee further and pin her down again, she is engulfed in an unanticipated wave.

Drowning. Azula looks up as the light above her begins to fade. Drowning in the spirit water of the Forgetful Valley and waiting for whatever release will stop her from feeling pain as she fulfills her final act. Drowning.

But, suddenly, a hand seizes Azula's and pulls her towards the surface with an impossible strength.

Azula opens her eyes and gasps in, expecting to see the horrid forest around her. Yet, no, it is just Ty Lee gently touching her arm and softly asking if she is okay through silent giggles.

"I am fine," Azula says smoothly as she stands up and wrings the heavy water from her raven hair.

"I'm sorry," Ty Lee whispers, bouncing to her feet with ease. "I forgot and I'm a horrible person."

"Why? I'm your wife. Or am I just some sick fuck like my father?" Azula says sharply and Ty Lee rubs her arm with a trembling lip. "Ugh. Don't _cry_. You look pathetic when you do that."

"I just don't want to have sex with a sixteen year old whose last memory of me is..." Ty Lee's breath catches. "I was so upset when they lost you. I just... _faded_. I faded like the auras I stopped seeing and I..." Ty Lee shakes her head. "Mai didn't care, Zuko was... Zuko. Of course Suki told me that I should move on. Everybody did."

"Oh, you _missed me_ , huh?" Azula was attempting to be mocking, but comes up short.

"Yes. I didn't really want to tell people about the stuff we did and all. But I couldn't stop. I couldn't stop..." Ty Lee trails off and shakes her head. Her soaked hair sends droplets of water everywhere, a few of them stinging Azula's eyes. "There was no cure or relief or just anything and I was trying to just be how everybody was and I just I saw you so much in my sleep because you were just always there like some kind of... ghost. You _were a ghost_ but you were the kind that just eats everybody alive and I was the kind who tries to pretend I wasn't one."

"Your poetry is _so_ moving," Azula spits remorselessly.

"There is nobody alive who even compares to you in the slightest." Ty Lee's eyes swell with tears and Azula tries to ignore them further. "I didn't _care_ that everybody said I _should_. Because I just couldn't and you were _everywhere_ and _everything_ and I couldn't take it. I was so scared because it was... Giving up wasn't an option when I saw you in absolutely everything and every time I closed my eyes and every time I slept and I never felt like that until it was _way too late_."

Azula...

Azula believes her.

"Tell me what happened," Azula says hoarsely.

"Nothing. A lot of things. You ruined me pretty bad and I kinda realized what it was like to have a rubber band and then just have somebody pull it way too hard and it never snaps back. It just, it just _snaps_ ," Ty Lee continues as the waves roar, eager to devour them both but not taking action on it. "But I ruined you worse."

"Mai told me that maybe I wanted to forget. Why?" Azula breathes as she begins to walk to Ty Lee. The moonlight shines on her and Azula wants to _own_ that beauty exclusively.

Ty Lee rubs her face and pulls her soaked, half dismantled braid away from her eyes.

"I..." Ty Lee seems about to _talk_ and Azula could not be more excited, but then suddenly Zuko is bellowing their names like a fool.

"Azula, Ty Lee!" he shouts and Azula feels her heart stop.

That is not Zuko being loud and oblivious to others.

That is Zuko screaming in panic and fear.

Ty Lee does not look at Azula for a second longer as she begins running down the beach with most of her clothes missing.

And Azula does not hesitate to run after her with the same urgency.


	6. The Trial

**Chapter Six:** The Trial

* * *

Azula and Ty Lee run across the beach without paying their sexual encounter any mind.

Zuko should not be making that sound. That is a _bad_ sound if there ever was one. Azula does not know why she is not livid that Ty Lee was cut off before she could start _talking_ about whatever is going on in this nightmare, but she isn't.

The two of them run, run, run and at last reach the beach, in which Zuko is walking out of the water with a medium sized animal in his hands. Azula glances to her left and halts in the soaking sand as she sees the Avatar and his wife.

Not a medium sized animal; it's a wailing little girl. _It's Azusami_.

At least she is crying. That means she is alive. Azula considers walking towards the scene, but she cannot bring herself to do it. Instead, she stands, her body illuminated by moonlight, as she watches the water whore examine Azusami and do her _waterbending_ and then Azusami is sitting on the sand, holding it in her fists as she cries.

"Azula!" Ty Lee calls out and the princess feels no choice but to walk to the others who surround her daughter. It feels… uncomfortable, to say the least. Ty Lee looks almost relieved when she sees her alleged wife stand in front of her alleged child. "Azula, will you go make sure Kazumi is okay?"

Both Zuko and Katara look skeptical and concerned about that task, which makes Azula want to do it and do it so well that they both feel so ashamed. She strides to the Summer Palace and looks around slowly for her other alleged child.

"Kazumi!" Azula calls out, feeling a chill when she passes her reflection. She cannot handle the Visitant right now.

"I'm here!" chimes a little voice and Azula does not conceal her sigh of relief.

She just walks into the next room to see her daughter perched on the sofa.

"Do you always sit so strangely like that?" Azula asks and Kazumi blinks, clearly confused by the question. "On the top of the furniture instead of… well, on top of it but the part on top of it you are supposed to sit on."

Kazumi still looks puzzled and so Azula sighs and sits down across the room.

"Are you mad?" Kazumi asks, her lip trembling. She looks too worried for Azula's comfort.

Her conversation earlier with Azusami has made her question if she is a better person in this life than her previous one. Even if all of these assholes disagree with that, Azula thinks perhaps once a monster, always a monster. It's just a shape-shifting beast that possesses Azula in a variety of ways.

 _"If you can't contain the beast in you," father says, "it will find its way out somehow at some point in time. It always does."_

Azula stares at Kazumi. "Have you ever met your grandfather? My father. I suppose Ty Lee also has a father…"

"You said you'd take me while we're on this trip but you got amnesia and so now you can't probably," Kazumi says brightly, her voice muffled do to having her fingers in her mouth. "Uncle Zuko even said it was 'kay for 'sami too."

"Right," Azula says, offering a smile that Kazumi seems to just find scary. More things Zuko and cronies thought were convenient to leave out when explaining this trip to Azula.

"I don't have a father," Kazumi says casually and Azula doesn't know what to say about that.

"Well, I might be your father. Am I…?" Azula now cannot remember which of the children she gave birth to. "I'm an awful mother. Don't answer that."

"You're not awful," Kazumi says and she looks like she is going to cry.

Azula has made her child cry. Azula has been a mother for a few days and has already traumatized both of her children. Azula is now extremely confused because the child she just has displayed indifference towards has now thrown her arms around Azula and is hugging her with her head right below the princess's ribs.

She doesn't… really know how to move. Or what to say. Or what to do other than wait for the child to release her.

"Don't be upset, please," Kazumi says quietly and Azula just pats her on the head again, which she thinks is an appropriate display of affection towards your offspring. She would not know. "Why do you do that?"

Kazumi looks up with these round, innocent eyes and Azula does not know what she is supposed to say.

"I…" Azula hates feeling speechless, clueless and without the faintest idea of how to be _this person_. This person cannot _exist_ because Azula cannot _be_ this person.

"You usually say no hugging so are you…?" Kazumi looks like se is going to cry again and Azula envies her brother and alleged wife on the beach with a half-drowned child. This one is painfully inquisitive.

"Do you want to hear about me and my mother?" is a question Azula never thought she would ask in her life.

Kazumi nods. "Yeah, yeah, yeah."

"I used to want her attention, before I realized it was a waste of my time. Once…" Azula says with a small laugh, "I was so jealous of how my mother treated my brother when he was sick that I intentionally infected myself by licking a spoon he had eaten off of. Ew. That sounds even more disgusting when I say it out loud. Anyway, I was sick within a day and she told my father to deal with me. My plan didn't work, but I don't know what I expected."

"You _licked somebody else's spoon_?" Kazumi exclaims with an expression of horror. "Why?"

Azula sighs and leans against the vanity table. "It's a good thing you don't understand, I suppose. My mother never loved me and she never wanted me to love her, and so I did things like that. I told myself I was trying to get her love but really I was trying to expose her, or prove myself right."

Perhaps this _is_ some absurd experiment of a psychologist. They seemed to like toying with her in abstract ways as much as she liked breaking them before they made progress.

She then realizes the opportunity she has right now; children do not hold back and Kazumi is far too young to understand as much as Azusami does.

"Tell me about you and your sister. Do you two compete for attention?" Azula inquires cautiously. She needs the right words to get the right results.

Kazumi thinks for too long and Azula clenches and unclenches her fists. She does not have the _patience_ for this.

Finally, Kazumi replies, "Nope. We don't really fight or anything like that. Just sometimes. You and momma really do the fighting with each other. 'sami is nice."

Azula is not sure if Kazumi is implying that she is _not_ nice, but she has been developing an inescapably uncomfortable feeling.

"Good." Azula thinks that is a good thing, at least. She has never known of siblings without rivalry, but perhaps she and Ty Lee are just too fucked up for the alleged children to even consider contributing to the family tension.

She looks up and sees Azusami walking in on Zuko's shoulders, flushed, but looking perfectly happy after apparently having a near death experience.

Ty Lee tries to make eye contact with Azula, and so she walks away into the house and decides to go to sleep early.

[X]

Azula's dream that night is not a dream.

She has not even fallen asleep when she feels thin air trying to tear her apart, and then her head spins, and she finds herself sitting somewhere very far from atop a sandy mattress. She is in some weird place; the writing on the wall reads _The Earth Kingdom Palace of Justice_ , which does not bode well with her.

The buzzing of the crowd hurts; they are the same shadowy, fuzzy creatures that Azula has become accustomed to. If it weren't for how corporeal Azula is, she would think she was just looking at an elaborate watercolor painting.

Her words are not hers; she can't even understand them, much less stop them.

Everyone feels and seems so… _serious_. This is the gravest of matters and Azula is absolutely attempting to defend her life for reasons unknown. No one thought it appropriate to give her a trial before, and she does not know why they would ever suddenly demand it.

Fear. Fear blossoms inside of her and takes hold, despite somehow knowing what to say and how to move her hands that she glimpses at and sees are ever-so-slightly different than the ones she was looking at before. Younger. Drier and more neglected.

"So, how about choosing your last words?" is the only comment that Azula manages to comprehend before she feels that burning, aching, ripping sensation and squeezes her eyes shut.

No. She doesn't want to do this. She felt that trial. She felt that trial and she now knows that this world is far from perfect. What if this was her sentence? What if that is what the people demanded? _Convince her that she is what we want her to be and take away anything that makes her dangerous_.

What if they declawed her by wiping away her memories?

Ty Lee…

Azula felt ridiculous about thinking Ty Lee could _genuinely_ be the Visitant in disguise, but she does not feel ridiculous at all about the realization that Ty Lee would be the perfect person to appoint as her alleged wife. Ty Lee could chi-block her, Ty Lee had dated her in the past, Ty Lee was so cute that maybe she could pull it off.

"Azula," says Ty Lee softly, knocking on the open door as if it matters. "Can I stay here tonight?"

But Azula does not answer, because she is standing up so quickly that her knees making a cracking sound, and walking out into the main rooms of this house of horrors. It takes her mere breathless seconds to locate her brother and pounce at him.

She grabs him by the front of his shirt and leans in. He spins, he makes a yelping sound, his friends all seem to panic to the point of freezing in place. She is well aware that everyone around her is tense and ready to stop the fight but she has lost the ability to care about repercussions.

"I know what this is," Azula snarls and Zuko fails to make eye contact with her yet again. "Don't think you could hide it from me forever. I just remembered the trial. The one where they asked me about my _last words_. Oh, but you show such _mercy_. Just like you did to father…"

Zuko hisses, " _What trial_? You're not on trial here! You're on a fucking vacation!"

"What trial? The one with me in front of all of those whispering people defending myself. Because apparently I suddenly needed one of those," Azula snaps. "I am fairly certain that you wouldn't let me get off so freely that I could build a happy little family for years. How long was I in prison before you felt guilty enough to try to trick me into being your slave?"

"No!" Zuko shouts, now pushing her off of him. She stumbles back and stays in place, leaving the fabric of Zuko's shirt slightly shredded. "No one was going to execute you or do anything that awful. I swear. But you couldn't just be left out of that trial. It wasn't my decision. The Fire Lord isn't exactly in control of the world anymore."

"So why did you have such a grandiose affair if there wasn't an exciting verdict in the future?" Azula spits and she can feel the tension in the room shift to discomfort and anxiety.

"It wasn't just _your_ trial. After the fall of the New Ozai Society we _had to_ do something. Mostly executions. Mostly. These people had to be tried for war crimes that no one even had _names for_ yet! But you _wanted to be involved_! I was the one who agreed with your demand to let you represent yourself even though everyone said it would be like suicide!"

Azula exhales smoke; she hates the fact that she knows he is telling the truth for once.

"Okay, okay, so what happened then? What _happened_? What was I charged with?" Azula screams, now realizing that she has just revealed her condition to all the people she has been trying to hide it from. She supposes she cannot hide it any longer.

"Ba Sing Se was a big deal. That was a bad thing but they just gave you house arrest with…" Zuko nervously glances at Ty Lee, "a guard. You were young and made a pretty good case. Everyone said they were just following orders, but you were a lot more sympathetic than those old men. The Fire Nation would have started another war if they had you had given you a more grievous punishment than a temporary prison sentence."

Azula supposes she likes what she hears. It sounds somewhat plausible as well, when she thinks about it. But that doesn't change the fact that she _knows_ her situation is most likely staged. There is no way that this is her _real life_ , and that fact being left out makes her skin crawl with paranoia.

Yes, she would have made it out of any trial they tried to put her in, but there is something utterly horrifying about the idea that something like _that_ could have happened to her and she is none the wiser.

"So, why exactly does Azula not remember _The Greatest Trial in History_?" Katara asks bluntly, when even Toph does not want to touch the situation with a ten-foot pole.

Zuko sighs. "She has amnesia and we really don't know why. She said she didn't want to reveal it to you guys, and so Mai and Ty Lee and I decided to _respect her wish_." His eyes meet Azula's at last when he says the last three words.

"I thought that would be a lot harder to explain," Mai remarks and Zuko turns up his palms.

"That's startling, since I presume all of you were in on it already." Azula walks away and does not reemerge from the shadows of her room for nearly two days.

At least until a child bounds inside uninvited.

"Mom!" Azusami screams. "Mom! Mom! Mom!"

Azula wants to pretend that she is shouting for Ty Lee. She thinks she is called _mother_ by her children, and Ty Lee is _momma_ and so that word makes no sense. But Azula is the only one in the secluded room that she has been trying to sleep away her sorrows in.

"What is it?" Azula asks with a long sigh. She doesn't sit up or even lift her head from her pillow.

"Uncle Zuko says he's gonna take us on a tour about you and your past and I dunno why but I'm excited and I get to see all the stuff I don't know and meet my grandfather and…!" Azusami trails off, squinting her eyes and stopping her spinning. "I forget the rest of what I was saying."

Azula stares and tries to think up the appropriate words. They don't seem to exist.

"So, why don't you know anything about my past?" Azula inquires, hoping that fabled _honesty of children_ will be useful and not obnoxious.

Azusami shrugs. "You never said anything about it. Momma says it's upsetting to you and I don't like it when things are upsetting to you."

Azula holds her tongue. She wants to snarl and snap at the child, but she knows she has to restrain herself now that her charade has ended and the Avatar and his family know how dangerous she is inside.

"So, what exactly happens when things… are upsetting to me?" Azula inquires, hating how interested she is in that. She _should_ be constantly thinking of ways to _escape_ ; instead she is getting _curious_ about this sham of a life.

Azusami rubs her face and then shrugs. The small sound she makes and the flush in her pale cheeks gives Azula the squeamish sensation that she is hiding something. Fine, Princess Azula is still crazy after all of these years. She can accept that, but she feels… odd about Azusami's reaction.

She knows it is _anger_ , but it is anger directed at this Azula, this person whose body she stole but she knows nothing about. Yesterday with Azusami and her discomfort, Kazumi and her calm reference to a disturbing scar on her skin. Azula does not want to imagine that this future mirage could have forgotten what Ozai and Ursa did to her.

Azula decides to add that to the list of reasons why this life cannot possibly be real.

[X]

"Help me tie my shoes!" Azusami asks Azula as they are leaving. Azula forced her brother to visit her father before the rest of the tour. There _is_ a chance that Azula might be able to coerce him into at least giving her a hint about her sentence…

If _this_ child asking for Azula to tie her shoes is the price to pay for the crime of being born.

"You can do that yourself," Azula snaps and Azusami frowns. And then tugs on Azula again. Azula barely restrains the urge to slap her across the face.

"No I can't I don't know how," Azusami stammers, holding out her shoes.

Azula clenches her jaw and contemplates her actions before reaching down and doing it. Or… attempting it. She doesn't think she knows how to tie shoes either…

"You don't even know what you're doing," Azusami whines.

"Then do it yourself. I'm not responsible for you being so fucking incompetent," Azula snarls and Azusami starts crying hysterically out of nowhere. "Stop that. It makes you look weak."

"Why…?" Azusami doesn't continue and so Azula turns away. "Please help! I'm sorry!"

Azula has no desire to try again. "I'm not good at this _mommy_ thing, okay?" Azula snaps and Azusami bursts into tears again. Azula _wants_ to feel bad about that, but she simply can't.

Because no one can blame her if she rejects this life.

Prison would be better than being snapped at by a child for not tying her shoes properly.

[X]

Azula is enjoying her solitude at the bow of the boat, when, of course, it is interrupted by her brother. She sighs and does not look up at him; she just continues to gaze at the water.

The salty wind is whipping her hair around and stinging her eyes and she has no patience for her brother.

"I'm sorry about leaving so much out. It's hard to know how to begin," Zuko says and Azula scoffs. "I feel really bad about leaving you in the dark, but you… you're not making this very easy."

"Cry me a river, ZuZu."

Zuko groans.

"Look, I'm going to be honest with you before we go see our father. I told you about how the trial happened after the fall of the New Ozai Society, right?" Zuko says and Azula sees honesty on his face. Or at least shame and humility, which makes her feel secure in the fact that he is guilty and apologetic.

"Yes," Azula replies.

"Well… you did a lot more than just give a, uh, riveting defense. You…" Zuko doesn't do anything more and Azula's violent fantasy of tossing him into the water and electrocuting him is so vivid she almost shakes. "I used you again and I'm sorry. You… some stuff happened and you… well, maybe father isn't as awful as I thought because when that stuff happened to you he decided to be more cooperative. You two… kind of… helped. You made some demands and he did and they weren't ridiculous so I granted them."

Azula frowns. "Some _stuff_ happened to me? What _stuff_ happened to me?"

Zuko gulps and blushes as red as his scar. She doubts she is getting any answers yet. Shame creates a thin line between honesty and fear to even say a word.

"It was intentional. You didn't really… agree… but it was better than the alternative," Zuko says and then he averts his eyes and takes a deep, shuddering breath.

Azula has no reaction. "So, father demanded exile?"

"Something like that. He said something about a better _view_ , and he wound up with this treatment. Truth is, even the people on _his_ side would like to kill him now and he's pretty defenseless and jaded."

"But I never come here?"

"You've come here. I have. Not really anybody else. Maybe some weird fangirls pop up once in a while."

Azula scoffs at _fangirls_ because _of course_.

The ferry stops. Azula freezes. But she manages to walk again as soon as her alleged wife gestures for her to follow.

[X]

"So, these are yours, are they?" Ozai asks after Azula allows herself to be searched by very nosy guards.

He is looking at the little girls who are much more interested in the furniture than the grandfather they claimed to be so excited to see. Maybe they do not quite understand what this is. What the ability to be near him is like.

This exile island is too beautiful for him. Of course, those tyrants thrown from thrones who do not have their heads put on stakes quite frequently can gain something… nicer than the prison he was inhabiting last Azula saw him. She is not sure what to make of it, and he can clearly see that in her.

But maybe this is worse than a torturous prison. Maybe he feels like she does right now; she is trapped in a beautiful body in a beautiful life but finding it inescapable makes it ugly. Azula has come to the conclusion while lying in her bedroom waiting for death that she would much rather be in the Boiling Rock or drowned like she planned than _here_.

Azula glances over and sees that Azusami and Izumi have located a cat, and are now getting it to chase around whatever it is they have their grubby hands on.

"Allegedly, they are my children," Azula says and he looks up at her. _Knowingly_.

"I heard about your incident. Well, we all knew the risks, didn't we?" he says with this… hint of amusement in his gravelly tone.

"The risks of what?" Azula whispers, wishing she could sound more forceful.

He leans back with this small smirk that makes nervous.

No, no; he is taunting her, just like the little girls taunting that cat.

"Walk with me. No one will mind," Ozai says and Azula knows following him feels foolish but she does it anyway.

The girls are still exploring the beautiful beach house and messing around with a kitten. when Azula and her father walk out onto the stone patio and towards a very beautiful garden. It is vibrant and so well kept. The garden looks intended to be walked through more often than the untouched stone path implies.

"I don't have anything to do with it," he answers before she asks. "But it's aesthetically pleasing. And I like beautiful things."

Azula looks away, because that is pathetic and she will not let a sole compliment sway her. "You like to _have_ beautiful things."

"People like to have what they like, little princess." He stops as soon as they are near the fire fountain in the center. It is not on, but the soot and ash coating the metal is warm when Azula touches it. "I'm sure you want to have control. You _like_ it, but you certainly don't have any of it at their hands."

"I have complete control. They just don't know it," Azula replies curtly and he laughs.

"You really are sixteen in there, aren't you?" he remarks and the only sound is the waves and wind for an uncomfortably long time. "Most of this is true, since it's hard to hide things like this. If they could lock up those little girls out of sight, I'm sure they would have. They have everything to lose and nothing to gain by telling you about your life."

Azula shakes her head. She shrugs. She wrings her hands.

"I know that. I'm not stupid," Azula says earnestly and Ozai looks her up and down.

"You're stupid enough to do something stupid if you get the news the wrong way at the wrong time. No family is perfect, and yours has more than its share of scars. Have you seen your wife's?"

Azula feels blue hot _rage_ at the idea of someone hurting Ty Lee, even if she is Azula's enemy. She wants to tear whoever it is to pieces for laying a hand on her.

"No," Azula says and he shrugs.

"Perhaps if you got a look she would be more malleable," he replies with this glint in his golden eyes. "If you do that, I'll tell you more."

"Wait," Azula says, holding up one hand with a fire in her eyes. "I thought you took me out here to tell me about what is going on."

"No, I took you out here to prod you in a direction that anyone would believe you figured out on your own. I have absolutely no desire to risk being sent back to prison or executed because you gave yourself amnesia and now want me to fix it all for you. I simply think it would be a very fitting punishment for your brother to be reminded how he can't just brush powerful people under the rug and expect them to stay there." Ozai shrugs.

Azula does not believe him enough to take his word for anything. But she does believe that he would take great pleasure in turning she and her brother against each other at any opportunity. He enjoys the idea of manipulating her. Making the skeletons in the closet dance.

She takes that as enough of a reason to get a look at the scars.

"I will consider your suggestion. Although, maybe you should fix your children's messes instead of causing them once or twice. It's good parenting," Azula says icily and he laughs again. That same mirthless laugh that Azula hates.

"You don't know anything about good parenting. In the present or the past."

He gives her another infuriatingly knowing look.

Azula thinks her father is quite lucky that she wants to do this to Zuko as much as she does, else perhaps he would find himself on the wrong end of a lightning bolt.

[X]

The minute she manages to get herself alone with Ty Lee and separated from the human shield of the two children, Azula sets out to see the scars. It should not be so difficult, after she had such success on the beach mere nights ago.

"Can I share a bed with you?" Azula asks, but she is already making herself comfortable beside Ty Lee's half-sleeping body.

"Why?" Ty Lee says, turning and looking up at the princess with glittering eyes.

"I've been having such bad nightmares since I learned about the trial. I'm…" Azula looks away very pointedly. She is certain Ty Lee buys it, because her alleged wife rubs Azula's arm gently and allows the princess to lie beside her.

Azula waits for a few moments. She is unsure how to initiate this; she never has had to do that before. But she does edge closer and closer, feeling awkward despite her well timed and fluid movements. At last, she very gently kisses Ty Lee's neck.

And she wishes she were not so uncertain, because she needs Ty Lee not to whine about her petty morality again. She runs her fingernails along her alleged wife's spine and Ty Lee turns around. She does kiss Azula on the mouth, and it feels perfectly right.

The undressing is hasty, and Azula makes sure it remains that way. Ty Lee _thinking_ is the worst possible thing that could happen today. She presses herself tightly against her alleged wife and does not let up until all she really does is moan.

Ty Lee lies back with a gasp that nearly steals Azula away from her plans. This is certainly not as easy of an interrogation as Azula thought, because the hands undoing her clothes and running across her skin and making her far too hot and wet to think clearly are more of a blockade than anything her horrid alleged family has thrown at her.

The lust for this sex is stronger than the lust for escape.

But as she kisses Ty Lee's collarbone, she exhales softly. Her lips have come into contact with moon white scars and she remembers her purpose and manages to ignore the very angry fire inside of her begging for more.

"How did you get those?" Azula asks as she slowly sits up, but not stopping straddling her, and traces the lines with her fingertips.

"Nowhere," Ty Lee breathes. She is not flushed just from the sex now, Azula is certain.

Because it does not take a long time for Azula to realize that _nowhere_ means _from you_.

She feels that same sickness she felt with Azusami when she heard about her _parenting skills_.

"How bad of a person am I in this life, on a scale of one to ten?" Azula asks softly and Ty Lee purses her lips. Azula lifts her eyes from the beautiful nude body and sits up. "Be honest."

"Eleven," Ty Lee states.

"Not _that_ honest. Agni." Azula tries to laugh and fails.

"Well, okay, I believe in you. We all do, and most of the time you've… No; I'm gonna be honest. Zuko kept promising you weren't like your father but you really always have been."

"I can't possibly be that awful of a parent."

"No, I mean, Azula I would have left with both of them if you were as bad as him," Ty Lee says and that tiny wrinkle on the side of her lip belies her sentiment.

"So when did you realize the unfathomable debts of how much you regret marrying me?"

Ty Lee's eyes flash and lips pop apart in shock. Azula quite likes that expression. "I _don't regret that_!"

"You protest too much. I wouldn't mind if you do wish you had never tied the knot with such an awful person. I certainly regret marrying you and I don't even remember doing it. I'm not even sure if I _did_ do it." Azula smirks.

"So, I assume it's the… answers you got that make you ask that?" Ty Lee inquires with a delicate but deep breath through her mouth.

"Yes. I think it's funny that you all keep going on and on about how I was allegedly _redeemed_ but I seem like a much worse monster than before. I don't have any excuses to be the person I apparently am. I did when I was young. I don't now," Azula says quietly as she examines the shreds of the Milky Way in the starry night sky. She has almost forgotten Ty Lee is with her as she thinks aloud.

"I know. I know you're not perfect but you've done more to atone than anyone ever thought you would. You worked as hard as Zuko, maybe harder," Ty Lee says, chewing on her lower lip as soon as she runs out of words.

"I think it is understandable if I don't believe that," Azula states and the cold nighttime chill sinks through her skin and bones.

"I love you," Ty Lee blurts out and Azula scoffs.

"How unfortunate," Azula remarks with a cruel smirk and Ty Lee shakes her head. "That must be painful."

"Love doesn't hurt," Ty Lee says.

"Those scars on you tell a different story." Azula pauses, somewhat pleased that Ty Lee is speechless now. "No, love as a whole doesn't hurt, or so I've been told. But I've been told by the only person who ever really loved me that it's loving somebody who doesn't know how to love that tortures you to death."

Ty Lee doesn't disagree. Azula knows it is because she can't.

* * *

 **A/N:** _I usually don't do explanatory ANs because I aim for my exposition and plot to do the explaining for me, but, this last scene I think warrants a quick note._

 _If you've read my fics before, you might know that I tend to write about severely flawed people with disquieting opinions that I don't share. In this fic, Ty Lee's viewpoint on domestic abuse is intentionally disturbing and the abuse itself is one of those mature-but-necessary plot elements that I mentioned in the rating section. The reason I wanted to explain this note is because so many romance stories glamorize or normalize abuse and I feel the need to express that this won't be one of those._

 _Thank you so much for reading this far and I hope you're enjoying the show._


	7. The Labrys

**Chapter Seven:** The Labrys

Azula once broke her own finger.

It was not to make herself suffer. It was to get what she wanted from her father.

He caved in the minute he heard the _crunch_. Ozai gave her wanted she wanted because she was the only thing he feared. Just like Azula fears her own children. She fears them more than the Visitant, and so when the Visitant shows up in the mirror as a young girl, Azula's heart begins to race.

She begins to wonder if Azusami and Kazumi are inventions of her sadistic imagination, that Ozai's fear of her and her fear of her mother have somehow combined within her and produced her worst nightmare.

"Go away," Azula says softly, because no one will hear her. Ty Lee is asleep but Azula cannot stop thinking about the scars. "Go away. I don't have the patience for you."

"You'll have to be more convincing than that," says the Visitant in that voice that is her own but is alien at the same time. "I'm the only thing you know and understand in this fucked up world."

Azula examines her fingers, curls and uncurls them. It takes her two thoughtless seconds to bring down her gilded hairbrush down upon her right ring finger full-force.

 _Crunch_. It isn't even loud. Not even that satisfying. Azula does not think she even feels it, but the Visitant gives her what she wants.

Azula looks at the crookedness. It was already slightly bent from the first time she broke it and it healed poorly. The base of her nail is already bruised and she supposes she has to come up with an excuse for the broken bones.

It is when she begins to first feel the hot pain when she is plunged into the most frightening and jarring of her blurring moments yet.

She stands and her hands are clenched on the inside of a basin. Her finger is unbroken and bound by a mark of her marriage. Azula looks up and tries to see into the mirror, but everything is too hazy and blurred by her broken head.

"I will never bend again. I promise that I will never bend again," she is forced to say and the words horrify her. _How could she say that? How could she say that and mean it?_

Because Azula's voice is pained, agonized. She falls into sobs that she has not felt since she was chained up as the comet burned to pieces.

"You don't mean that." Ty Lee from behind.

 _Does she not see that Azula is weak and vulnerable and crying? Does she not know to keep her mouth shut?_

"I do. I'm telling you that I won't. I understand…" Azula loses her words and tries to force something brutal into that empty space. But this body is not under her control, the words unchangeable. "I understand why my mother would give up _everything_. I will _never_ bend again."

"Azula…" Ty Lee whispers feebly.

"I'll ask him. I'll ask the Avatar and there'll be one promise I'll keep. You always say I never keep them, don't you?"

"Don't punish yourself to hurt me," Ty Lee says and Azula gazes at the blood in the water.

When Azula looks up, she breathes in deeply, her chest feeling freer. Those tears and sobs were not real, and she is in a world of clarity. She is not sure if it is the real one, but at least it doesn't look like a bleeding ink painting.

She looks at her finger and feels queasy with regret.

And then Ty Lee joins her, of course.

"What happens when you learn your god bleeds?" Ty Lee says quietly and Azula jumps, torn from her reverie. She reaches out to touch Azula's broken bone but the princess steps away before she can.

"You can't have made that up," Azula says and Ty Lee smiles and shakes her head.

"Yeah, you said them to me. But I guess you wouldn't remember," Ty Lee says quietly, her fingers moving from Azula's hair to rest gently on her clavicle. "Last night was weird. I'm sorry."

Azula shakes her head. "I was the one asking the questions."

She walks into the bedroom again and it takes her a moment to remember where she is. She's in her father's prison, but it is so _beautiful_. There are petals falling like snow outside, the sun pours through the crystalline windows, and Azula can smell the cold sea breeze. Ozai doesn't deserve this place; she can't figure out what would be worth giving him _this_.

"What's wrong?" Ty Lee asks, sitting down on the bed.

"Why did I even let him have this place? Zuko said something about trials and the New Ozai Society but…" Azula shrugs and shakes her head.

"You had some demands too," Ty Lee whispers. Her eyes sparkle in the light that pours through the window. "I think you just wanted those bad enough to give him whatever he wants."

Azula sighs and squints at the sun outside. Same sun that rises every day and fills her with a fiery energy. "So, what is that about gods bleeding?"

Ty Lee blushes. "I…" Pause. "You said that to me when I was so…" Pause. "Hurt. Maybe. I don't know. It was hard for a long time. It's still hard. I took care of you kind of really a lot. Yeah, I took care of you. But you had always been this perfect deity and…" Pause. "And I found out that you could be brought down for real. Before I was actually trying to care for you it didn't have to be real. The asylum or you or anything. But it got real and it was like this childhood dream just got smashed to bits in front of my face."

Azula holds her tongue. "I hurt my finger."

"You _broke_ it," Ty Lee says quietly.

"Pain is the only thing that feels remotely real in this place. Do you know what it's like to wake from one nightmare just to enter another?" Azula says coldly and Ty Lee seems to be having a staring contest with her bare feet.

"No. I'm going to go get bandages for that and go back to sleep. You should rest too," Ty Lee says and Azula doesn't bother telling her just _how much_ she isn't allowed to order the princess around.

But Azula sits down and sighs. Ty Lee leaves the room and returns with a small wooden box. She starts fixing Azula, the princess not allowing herself to show any pain. Once her finger is splinted, Ty Lee slowly stands up.

And Azula kisses her on the lips. Because Azula is an _idiot_.

Ty Lee doesn't push her away, but she does step back when the kiss breaks.

"Oh, I forgot. You're too noble to fuck me but don't mind keeping me in the dark."

"I've told you _everything_!"

"Now, you know that's a lie. Everyone is dancing around whatever the _truth_ is. You all have deception written on your faces and in your breath even when discussing the weather with me. Even Azusami."

Ty Lee pouts, as Azula could have predicted, and walks to lie down.

Azula turns away from her and slips into sleep.

But not quite. She opens her eyes and finds herself in that twisted, shadowy, watercolor world. Yet, being stuck in a body with a mind of its own doesn't quite bother her because of what that body is doing right now.

Because there is a distinct heat that Azula is familiar with, but the rest she isn't. Her lips collide with Ty Lee's over and over, lighting her veins on fire. No clothes. Their cleavage pressed together – which she hasn't _not_ thought of before in her life – and a certain bliss.

Physical ecstasy, yes, but the sunlight shining on Ty Lee's sweaty hair is purely beautiful. It would be distracting if it were not for Ty Lee's lips pressing hard against the nape of her neck, before pushing her down. Azula is helpless, but this is not a bad kind of helpless.

Ty Lee kisses her on the lips, adjusts the arm she is balancing on, and her attention sinks, and Azula's toes curl in anticipation and…

The minute Azula wakes, cold and far away from that split-second that could have passed for a fantasy, she feels pure loathing for this world.

She feels pure loathing for Ty Lee, the liar lying beside the liar.

Azula nudges her, pokes her and then stabs her with a nail before she sits up and focuses. "Did we have sex before we got married?"

Ty Lee yawns. "That's… the weirdest question you've asked yet." She looks puzzled as she rubs her right eye with her knuckles. Azula is just glad that the conversation is no longer on the topic of the wound.

"I want to know if we did. That's an important question for reasons I won't tell you until you answer," Azula says, because she remembers turning down Ty Lee three times because of her desire to wait until after marriage, but it was fear…

It was fear that made her use than as an excuse to repress the feelings and complications of romance. She could have fucked whoever she wanted and she would still have the entire world if she wanted it. Azula had morality only when it suited her.

After silence, "No?"

Azula rolls her eyes and chastises, "That sounds like a question, not an answer."

"No. We didn't. But the reason I don't want to sleep with you isn't because I didn't have sex with you when we were younger, it's because I'm an adult and I'm somebody else than you know. It's wrong."

"That's not why I'm asking. I don't have to tell you why I'm asking." Azula pauses. She has more to gain by honesty than lying right now. "I'm asking because you get to remember sleeping with me but I don't get to. That's not anywhere near fair. If anything, I was doing you a favor by marrying you."

Ty Lee starts laughing before she realizes it was not a joke and sucks in a deep, fast breath to silence her giggles.

"You want to remember us sleeping together? That's… kind of sweet. That's _very_ sweet. Sort of. I mean, I'd rather you want to remember our wedding or falling in love or the birth of our children but that's good coming from the you that last saw me… uh, like that," Ty Lee says, her eyes sparkling happily.

Agni, she is easy. Azula cannot believe it sometimes.

She opens her mouth to ask about the bending, to ask about why she said she was going to get Aang to _remove it_ , but she changes her mind. Azula tells herself that it is just because she does not want Ty Lee to know how much she knows, but it is really because Azula does not want to know the answer.

"Do our children have any of those scars?"

"No. You've never done anything to hurt them," Ty Lee says and Azula doesn't know why Ty Lee is so afraid.

She decides that Ty Lee is telling the truth and is only afraid of the questions.

It is better than the alternative.

[X]

Azula watches Azusami and Kazumi play within a prison. The man this island revolves around is just the estranged grandfather, no different from their grandmother. This place _is_ too beautiful. Those two girls will never know until they are gone and older.

That troubles Azula.

She rises from watching her alleged children and sits down across from her father at a glimmering wooden table, with sunlight pouring through the windows. _This_ , she never imagined. She never could have come up with a life this unpredictable and that worries her. The idea of this all being in her head is much more comforting than the idea of everyone around her lying.

It has to be one or the other.

"You can't kill it and that bothers you. Things that can't be fixed by destroying them bother you, don't they, little princess?" Ozai asks and Azula licks her lips. She does not have a good answer.

"I suppose I am like you in more ways than you ever thought," Azula says, beginning to drum her fingers on the table. Her nails make a sound a little like a waterfall, maybe like rainfall when she slows them down slightly. "How much am I like you?"

"As much as you think you are. No—not how much you _want_ to be. How much you think you _are_ ," Ozai says and Azula fixes her gaze on an imperfection in the table.

"I have these…" Azula pauses and eyes him carefully. "I have these… _moments_. Where I'm not here but I'm trapped in myself."

"You're always trapped in yourself."

" _Stop it_. I'm trying to tell you something important," Azula says sharply, not caring if he objects to her bluntness or not.

"Did you ask her about the scars? I'm assuming you did."

"Yes. I suppose I made them?"

"Of course you did. But she always came back to get more."

Azula has the strong urge to punch him, but she instead stands up. And then her knees buckle.

Her head spins and she finds herself holding the hand of a screaming child. She tugs back on her, clutching her tightly. Azusami is the one; Azula thinks she can tell by the purer gold of her eyes. Kazumi's have flecks of amber.

"Don't go, don't go, don't go!" Azusami screams shrilly and Azula tries to cover her ears but her hands won't move. They just continue restraining her.

"She always comes back. She always does," Azula whispers and she realizes she is watching Ty Lee walk out of an elegant door.

"No!" screams Azusami and it is the last, chilling thing Azula hears before she is holding onto the side of a table, blinking several times fast.

"What was that?" he asks and Azula averts her eyes. She wishes she had stood up to him, but she instead just sits down again.

"I stood up," Azula says before leaving the room.

She feels like she is fleeing, but she will accept fleeing at the moment.

Everything is too confusing.

She cannot bear it.

[X]

Zuko approaches Azula as they are getting ready to leave.

Her visit with Ozai was far from as enlightening as she had hoped it would be. It was only infuriating, because her father decided to give her _hints_ but nothing more than hints. Bastard.

All she got out of Ozai was that she is a terrible person. Which is not exactly news. She doesn't mind leaving, all though she wants to burn this place down. It is difficult to fathom why she would ever let him have something as nice as this, when she got a fucking asylum.

"I know you're going to say no, but do you want to see mother?"

"Yes." Well, Azula never thought she would say that. But she _does_. Making people feel guilty seems to be the only effective way of gaining information, and if her mother doesn't feel in the slightest that she hurt Azula, well…

That would make being with her slightly better than her time spent here.

At least she never trusted mother, unlike the man here.

[X]

A medium length boat journey layer, Ursa pulls Azula into her arms and she nearly rips her mother's throat out before coming to terms with the embrace… and shoving herself away. Mother is crying much too hard; it unnerves the princess.

Zuko looks nervous. Azula _hopes_ it is because he was worried about Azula's reception and not a fear that mother will tell the truth.

"You told me I didn't ever make up with her!" Azula snaps at Ty Lee. She enjoys the flinching she hopes that these people pay for tricking her.

"How much did she lose?" Ursa asks softly and Zuko grimaces.

"Well, the last thing she remembers is drowning in the Forgetful Valley," Zuko answers, wringing his salty hands as she speaks.

Ursa looks nervous. Azula suddenly has gained interest in this situation. Mother says, "B-better than remembering nothing."

"Don't lie. You wished I had lost _everything_ and we could be best friends and have mother-daughter tea parties." Azula starts strong and she thinks she might have a chance at _answers_ for once. Not just more questions.

"Maybe selfishly, but I would never wish that on your daughters. One of them… I've never met," Ursa says uncomfortably before turning to the little one hiding behind Ty Lee's legs. Gently, in a voice she never spoke to Azula in, she says, "Hi, Kazumi."

"Say hi," Ty Lee prods and Kazumi just waves with her small hand half-closed. Ty Lee shrugs and offers a smile that looks like compensation. And Azula thought Ty Lee was on her side.

"So, I hear your other daughter doesn't speak to you either," Azula says instantly and she enjoys the cringes around the room. "What'd you do to her?"

Ursa unclenches her jaw and says calmly, "Nothing. I'm glad you came to visit."

"I didn't really want to," Azula says icily and her mother eyes her so _strangely_. "How do you know about my amnesia? I walked in first and ZuZu promised he wouldn't tell. Now, he breaks promises like any other person, but he does have an obsession with honor… unlike you."

Azula _does_ like how speechless that makes the woman who gave birth to her.

Zuko rescues her with, "I lied. I wrote to her when it happened because I wanted her to know, but I couldn't tell you or I'd lose you in five seconds."

Princess Azula believes him. It _is_ something ZuZu would do.

"Come inside, please. I'm sure you're all tired."

"I'm sure you're just waiting to kill me in my sleep." Azula invites herself inside without sticking around to see mother's reaction. She can imagine it just fine.

[X]

Azula tosses her own suitcase onto a bed in her mother's house.

Never did the princess think she would stoop this low.

"Do you want to go out and have tea with Zuko and your mother?"

"Please don't tell me my answer would be any different from when I was sixteen." Oh, Agni, she is using _past tense_ about herself now. She's _trapped_. She's possessing the body of older Princess Azula and nothing more than that.

"It wouldn't." Ty Lee sits down beside her.

They are in complete silence. The only sound that can be heard is the fireplace crackling, Azusami babbling and Zuko's voice. But Azula and Ty Lee might as well be frozen in time for several long minutes.

"Do you think I'm crazy?" Azula finally asks, breaking the silence like she breaks all things.

Ty Lee finishes her drink. She closes her eyes. Azula watches as she does everything but speak or answer the question.

"Yes," Ty Lee replies after Azula refuses to let her shrug the question off. "Not like you think I do. I think you're crazy to be trying to ruin this life instead of trying to accept it."

"I won't accept it. That's accepting defeat."

"Is prison or an asylum or _drowning_ really better than being married to me?" Ty Lee reaches across the table and grabs the rest of the bottle. She doesn't even bother pouring it into her smudged glass. "You can actually _live_ now."

"I don't think you get it. I don't know you. Not at all. The you I know died over a decade ago. And the Azula who died over a decade ago to you is standing right here."

"That doesn't change anything," Ty Lee snaps.

But it does.

But it does.

[X]

Azula's next glitch in reality is the most terrifying of them all. It is as she drifts between sleep and wakefulness while in the second guest bed of her mother's house.

She is lying down again, but it is nowhere near as pleasant as last time.

She doesn't move. _She can't move_. She _wants_ to move because she can feel the hot blood cooling on her skin. It is her blood; she doesn't have to be able to look at herself to know that. The pain of the wound is there.

There is…

There is nothing quite like being trapped, dying, in a body that wants her to die.

She feels faint, slipping away, slipping away.

If she falls asleep she might wake up back in her mother's house. Azula never thought she would think that.

She drifts, peacefully, away.

And wakes to Ty Lee screaming, "Azula!" at the top of her lungs. Ty Lee is sitting on her knees, hovering above Azula, disheveled from sleep.

"What'd I do?" Azula whispers, and then she feels the surge of panic at the same sensation on her skin. But she is not in the fake watercolor world… she is here and now and alive and each gasp for breath hurts more than the last.

"You were _asleep_ ," Ty Lee ekes out between her panicked sobs. She looks petrified and Azula can hear people waking up and walking down the hallway."What happened? What…"

"If I was asleep, how would I know what happened?" Azula pushes herself up and it feels _so good_ to be in control of her body. But her body is very unhappy with her right now, and she feels metal twist inside of her – she falls back down after that. "In my dream I was trying to…"

Azula doubts anyone would believe that.

Mostly because she has a pair of scissors wedged between her ribs and blood all over her hand.


	8. The Captive

**Chapter Eight:** The Captive

* * *

"I didn't do this," Azula says hastily.

She is panicking and in agonizing pain, but she has to make sure people know it was not her. She will _never_ get locked up again, no matter what it takes. The knife makes tears blossom in her eyes, but she does not let them fall.

"Who did?" Ty Lee asks. She sounds breathy and frightened. Azula can see the shock on her eyes and feels the panic intensify. But she cannot think like that because she is brave.

"I tripped and fell onto scissors," Azula lies. It is far, far from her best excuse. She is a little too focused on the fact that she is stabbed and she does not know who did it.

"That's—that's the most ridiculous lie I have ever heard!" Ty Lee shrieks as she frantically looks around. She then stares at the scissors. "I hope those didn't hit anything important."

"Get someone competent," Azula orders through her clenched teeth. " _Now_."

Ty Lee does not have to be told twice, thankfully. She runs from the room and disappears, leaving Azula alone with metal near her bones and her muscles tight. Azula wonders if she is supposed to do something about this, but military training or not, she does not know how to handle an injury like this.

She tries to think about what happened. Lying there trapped in one of those memories, paralyzed by another body that she is stuck in, and then she opens her eyes and pain hits her like a tsunami. None of that explains how it happened.

Someone did it other than her, Azula suddenly realizes. One of the people in her mother's house stabbed her while she was unconscious, and they…

Ty Lee. Ty Lee is the only person who was in the room.

Azula's hand might be covered in her own blood, but anyone would be capable of setting that up if the princess was closed up in her head. Ty Lee was there when she woke; she probably came back to this world too early and stopped an attempted murder.

If Azula had those scars, if Azula had been treated like that by someone else, she would kill them.

"I've got this," Zuko says.

"I told you to get someone competent," Azula snarls, her voice constricted with emotion and pain. Yes, this is evidence that Ty Lee wants her dead.

"Our mother will help with medicine, I will get these scissors out," Zuko says and Azula's lips part in utter horror.

"No. You are not touching this _ever_ ," she frantically orders, not removing her hand from the gilded metal. "I would rather die than suffer through something that _ridiculous_."

"It's not ridiculous. It's saving your life. I'm not letting you die on me," Zuko says and he is honest.

Azula looks up at Ty Lee, trying to make her break with a single glance. It does not work; her alleged wife is crying too hard. She thinks it might be fake, but her head is a bit preoccupied with the scissor wound.

Zuko is somehow competent enough to help her, once she allows him.

[X]

"Why did you do that?" seems to be the question of the day.

Everyone asks it, even her mother, who has no right to speak to her in the first place, even Mai, who has never seemed to care enough to ask. Ty Lee inquires the most, even though Azula is certain that it was Ty Lee who stabbed her in the first place. It would not be the first time.

At least this time Ty Lee stabbed her in the front instead of the back.

Azula has heard people question her sanity before, albeit never while in crippling pain and unable to get out of bed. Everyone manages to come in and out within the space of an hour. Her mother silently attempts to be helpful, Zuko asks her questions and she ignores him, Ty Lee cries more while Azula analyzes her for signs of attempted murder, Kazumi pulls on her hair for a little while, and Azusami comes in last.

"Is it deep?" Azusami asks eagerly. It is new, Azula will give her that. "Can you see your insides under the bandage? What happens if I touch it? Can I touch it?"

"It is deep, you can't see my insides, and don't you dare touch it." She gives the most straightforward answers she has all day.

"Who stabbed you? Did you stab yourself?" Azusami asks, dancing from one foot to the other. At least she is honest about reveling in Azula's pain, unlike the adults.

And so Azula owes her the same honesty. Smugly, she says, "Your mother stabbed me."

"Really?" Azusami's eyes widen with… excitement? This child confuses Azula.

"Yes. Or at least I'm fairly certain," Azula replies smoothly with a smirk. Azusami tilts her head to the side and then shrugs.

"Wow. She said she's killed people before, but I didn't think she'd kill you!" Azusami declares like the fucking town crier. Azula wants to cover her mouth and tell her the importance of whispering, but she restrains herself. Azusami is the only person Azula does not consider an enemy.

"Why would she say that?" Azula asks hoarsely. Well, it _is_ true, but not a fact Azula would ever tell her child.

"Because I asked," Azusami replies.

Azula scoffs. "So, in our family we just answer questions that are asked?"

Azusami squints. "I guess?"

Silence.

"Are you my favorite child?" Azula inquires, forcing herself to ignore the pain and roll on her side to better analyze her alleged daughter.

"I don't know," Azusami uncomfortably squeaks. _Now_ she shuts up.

"You know, and I asked." Azula locks eyes with her and she swallows.

"Yes?"'

"That sounded like a question, not an answer."

"Yes," Azusami says with fierce certainty. Hmph.

"I figured. You act close to me," Azula remarks, again squeezing her eyes shut and adjusting her position despite the ache that makes her feel like she is being stabbed again and again.

"I am!" Azusami says brightly.

Azusami admittedly looks like Azula, but she is nothing like her alleged mother.

Azula does not know what to make of it, but she thinks she has an ally in the six-year-old.

[X]

Azula faces the scissors that almost killed her.

Standing is painful, and so she has one hand clamped tightly on the counter. It supports the entirety of her weight as she futilely tries to find the scissors' secrets.

She is startled that anyone let her touch them, but she demanded it. These people are surprisingly malleable now that they think she's a volatile lunatic who stabbed herself, which is baffling to Princess Azula.

After close examination, the bloodied scissors reveal themselves to be useless. She is not finding a clue in household trinkets. She needs _people_ for that, but _people_ are all unwilling to cooperate.

Azula stares at the basin of water. It doesn't stare back at her.

She examines her reflection and feels her thoughts start to race as they are apt to do.

' _This place is too good to be true. Not because we could never be a happy family, but because I…_ ' She doesn't want to be thinking this. She does not know why she thinks this. _'The worst part about my life before drowning was that I thought I had no future. That after Zuko stole everything from me I didn't have anything. One second I had twenty years planned out and I was going to be Fire Lord, and the next, I had nothing and no reason to hope for anything.'_

"And you're looking at your future? Do you not like it?" asks a voice Azula does not want to hear.

A voice that can hear her thoughts because it is not real. This world is terrible and Azula just wants to go home, even if home is drowned at the bottom of a lake.

"Leave me alone," croaks the tired princess. Well, that makes Azula feel weak. She looks at the reflection in the placid water and then closes her eyes.

The problem is that she does like it. She is angry at her future-self for taking this for granted, and that makes Azula want to scream. Hurting a girl she allegedly loved is disturbing enough, but having a serene life with political power and a quaint family appeals to her.

 _That_ keeps her up at night. This is not supposed to look good to her. It is supposed to be a trap that she desperately needs to escape.

"Do you think you don't deserve your happy ending?" coos the Visitant. Azula knew closing her eyes was not good enough.

"I deserve an ending I choose," Azula whispers. "And I would never choose this."

She drops the scissors into the water and watches the destruction of the two monsters reflected in it.

[X]

No one protests when Azula locks herself in her room. She can hear people sounding so _happy_ outside and wonders how they can bear to do that. Azula is in misery and they think she tried to kill herself, but they are _happy_.

They all disgust her. She knows she should expect such callousness from mother, ZuZu and Ty Lee but she does not like facing it. How _dare_ they just eat dinner when she is wasting away in the dark guest bedroom.

She even hears them all _laugh_.

Azula examines the lotion on the beside table for a brief moment. It appeals to her; it is something to take her mind off of the drunken revelers who make her so sick. She unscrews the top, smells it, touches it, and decides it is worth it.

When she rubs it on her legs, she feels sick. Not because of the overpowering sweetness of the flowers, but because she tries to ignore that these legs are not her own. She does not know the stories behind any scars, doesn't understand why they feel and look so different after over a decade. This body is not her body and she will never pretend that it is.

Everyone tells her she just has amnesia. That is a joke.

She scrubs the lotion off of her skin with the comforter and screws the cap back on. The scent does not go away, but she manages to push it out of her mind again, like every time she sees or feels herself. No — not herself, some stranger.

"Are you okay?" And Ty Lee intrudes again.

"Are you watching me?" Azula replies and Ty Lee gives her an exasperated glance. "Everyone seems to be. Afraid I'm going to pull back the curtain and reveal that this is a trick?"

"Why would we ever _trick you_? Doesn't this seem a little too elaborate for that?" Ty Lee asks breathlessly. "There's no way we would put this level of resources into _tricking you_."

"My brother has infinite resources, and infinite fear of me," Azula says coldly before standing and abandoning her alleged wife.

"Are you sure you don't want dinner?" Ty Lee offers and Azula laughs mirthlessly. "Fine. Be awful."

Ty Lee slams the door shut.

[X]

Azula is trying and failing to sleep when her mother walks in.

"I have painkiller; don't stab me," Ursa says when she opens the door.

"I see you have a sense of humor. I wouldn't know that, seeing as I barely even remembered your voice," Azula icily replies, and she can feel the sting. It feels good.

Her mother cautiously hands her medicine and says, "I see I have to hold you captive to get you to talk to me."

"I see you have a very poor sense of humor. That's not funny to a real prisoner," Azula says as she sips and then swallows it all. It tastes terrible.

"No, it's not funny. But it's true." Ursa lingers. She clearly wants to talk.

Azula entertains it. "You do understand that this will be our first real conversation since you left me when I was a child. There's a lot unsaid."

"I know that you're… sixteen." Ursa looks as disturbed by that as everyone else.

"You think it's jarring from the outside; think about what it feels like on the inside," is Azula's standard reply.

"Like a body that isn't yours." Uncomfortable silence. "I'm sorry. I don't expect you to want my help and so I won't offer it."

"How kind," Azula snarls, grateful for the numbing sensation of strong herbs.

Ursa sighs. "We never talked it through in over a decade. Don't worry; I'm not kidding myself. I only just met Kazumi. She's so sweet."

"She's weird."

"She's a child. Children are weird. You were weird."

Azula bristles. "Don't act like you know me."

"I know that I don't know you." She is stunningly honest. Azula does not remember her being that way, but she does not remember her either. "I know when you were little I wasn't there. I've said this before."

"Not to me. Well, to the _me_ you think you know. I'm not your me, I'm my me."

"That's confusing," Ursa carelessly admits.

"You people found me at some point. How'd you treat me then?"

"I've apologized every time you demanded one. That's a lot of times."

"That wasn't my question."

"I treated you delicately and you hated it."

Silence.

Azula will not say aloud that she liked that reply. But she does say, "So far you've been more honest with me than anyone else. I'm surprised. Or maybe not surprised. I think you're selfish enough to want to use their game to make me trust you."

"This isn't the best time to work out our problems."

"Time, time, time. You people all act like I'm going to stick around if I don't get answers soon."

"You could leave. There really isn't anything stopping you."

"The only thing stopping me is the fact that I need to _know_." Azula is startled at her own honesty. It feels strange to talk to a ghost… a real person, not a Visitant.

"You don't want to know."

With that infuriatingly cryptic comment, her mother abandons her yet again.

How surprising.

[X]

That evening, Iroh decides to join his niece, nephew and their families now that their stay at mother's is prolonged. Azula being stabbed is the only reason that she would stay in her mother's presence for longer than two seconds, and even then she is considering hobbling across the ocean if she is offered another snack.

And now Uncle. She does not need him. Really.

After an attempted murder and unable to run from her mother, she does not think she can tolerate _lectures_ and _proverbs_ and false sympathy. He was never there when she was a child, and he cannot pretend to care now. It is much too late for him.

She is stuck in her bed when he walks in, under the impression that she _cares_ if he is here or not.

Iroh leaves after informing her that he cares so damned much about her brush with death, but before Azula can even sigh from relief, Zuko walks in.

"How did you do that?" Zuko asks.

"What?" Azula asks.

"Avoid an hour long lecture from him."

"Oh, do you not…? I'm going to change your life with this secret." Azula leans in and whispers, "Whenever he starts lecturing me, I tell him something he has already told me. He doesn't remember any of his unwarranted advice. He just tells me I have made so much progress and that he's happy for me. I have alleged amnesia and I can figure that out."

"You can't just tell people what they want to hear," Zuko protests fiercely.

Azula rolls her eyes. "You're right. I know that what I do is wrong and that I lack all integrity, and I should stop taking the easy way out of things."

"That wasn't funny," Zuko says bitterly.

"Yes, it was. Enjoy spending your entire life listening to speeches about self-improvement."

"Do you even want to try? You could fit in with this life if you tried."

"No. I don't want to try. Not at all. I didn't choose to be here, I would _never_ choose to be here, and I wish I could murder all of you."

"That was…" Zuko sighs. Azula smirks. "Honest."

"But speaking of that, why did I say I was going to willingly have my bending removed?"

"You would never say that."

Azula vehemently snaps, " _Don't lie_ to me. It's hard enough to trust you people without you consistently trying to manipulate my memories."

"Because you were having a hard time," Zuko insists.

"I was having a _hard time_ and so I wanted to _meet a fate worse than death_?" Azula remorselessly screeches.

"Hard time might be an understatement. But it's in the past and obviously you didn't go through with it." Zuko smiles at her and Azula wants to burn it off of his mutilated face.

"That's not good enough." Azula has a fantastic idea. She says, "I did go through with stabbing myself to try to get out of this horrible trap. Don't you think I deserve answers before I stab myself more successfully?"

"You didn't stab yourself intentionally," Zuko says coolly.

"I knew she tried to kill me!" Azula sits straight up and winces from the shooting pain.

"No one tried to kill you." Zuko groans and Azula mentally throttles him. "You've been saying that you didn't stab yourself on purpose since the minute we found you. You're changing your story in order to manipulate me."

"What if I just came clean right now?"

"That would be very convenient for you." He purses his lips, but does not shut up. "I'm not telling you anything shocking until you've acclimated by _trying_."

"That's coercion," Azula growls.

"That's an incentive. Like I give my daughter. Offer candy and you get good behavior."

"I am an adult and I can get my own fucking candy. I can get all the candy I want."

"Then get your own fucking answers." Zuko leaves and Azula stares after him, wondering when he became _smart_.

[X]

"I'm not staying with Ty Lee," Azula insists once night falls. "I'd rather sleep outside."

Ty Lee looks _huffy_ and Azula loves it.

"You can stay with mother," Zuko suggests mockingly.

"Ty Lee will sleep on the couch. I will remain in bed," Azula orders. No one challenges her, but Ty Lee has her fists clenched.

"I'm not…" Ty Lee crosses her arms, uncrosses them, crosses them again and then breathes, "I'll sleep on the couch."

"Good," Azula says. "Now someone help me get this awful bed ready who isn't a suspect in the case of my stabbing."  
"I'm a _what_?" Ty Lee shrieks.

"You heard me. You are the number one suspect, next is my mother, then Izumi, then Kazumi, then Zuko, then Azusami. I like her," Azula says coldly.

"Why is Zuko not at the top of the list?" Ty Lee demands.

"Because he would be incapable of doing that for a number of reasons."

"I'm taking that as a compliment and helping you to your room where no one has to talk to you anymore," Zuko says, offering a hand.

Ty Lee still looks bewildered as she storms out of the room. Zuko is the one who stays and helps his sister balance as he fixes everything for her.

He sets her down and sighs. "You really think Ty Lee stabbed you, don't you?"

"I will tell you the truth. Look at my eyes. These are honest eyes." Azula doubts he believes that, but it is true. "I passed out and thought I was covered in blood because I have these weird daydreams all the time and then I opened my eyes and I was stabbed and she was standing over me."

"What weird daydreams?" Zuko asks, cocking an eyebrow.

"Weird stuff. That's where I got the bending thing. I had a daydream of it."

"You mean _memories_."

"No. I mean daydreams." Azula knows they are memories, but she is _not_ confessing to that.

"You're not supposed to remember anything," Zuko breathes.

Azula grits her teeth. "You saying that isn't suspicious at all."

"We talked to a doctor when you woke up with amnesia. He said you wouldn't remember anything. That is all."

"I believe you," Azula admits. "But I don't believe her."

"That's fair. You last remember her betraying you horribly." Zuko shrugs and turns up his palms.

Azula says, "I want to speak to our mother."

"Why?" Zuko's eyes flash wide.

"I'm getting my own fucking answers."

"Why do you trust her more than us?"

"She has crippling guilt for abandoning us and destroying me mentally."

"She's not telling you anything."

"I. Want. To. Talk. To. Her."

Azula always gets what she wants.

[X]

"I'm not going to be nice or pretend to take any interest in you," Azula says, seizing control of this rematch. "Tell me what Zuko refuses to tell me."

"You're going to have to be more specific."

Azula gives her that. "Well, I would ask if this is some kind of experimental prison, but I'm just going to ask what he meant by _hard time_. I apparently went through a hard enough time that I wanted my own bending removed. _Why_?"

"I'm not siding with your brother but—"

"Don't even finish that sentence," Azula vehemently snaps. "Do I not deserve my life being kind of easy once in a while?"

"I think that you don't want to know, I think that we are all relieved that you don't remember what you've forgotten, not because it's an experimental prison, but because you would have wanted this."

"You can't say what _I wanted_. I wouldn't want this. I died. I died and I'm being punished. I drowned myself."

Ursa is not thrown off for a second by Azula's confession of suicide. She merely asks, "Well, you made the choice to drown yourself for a reason. Why?"

Azula is stunned and wishes that she were not. Ursa is not playing by the rules, which is, by definition, _not fair_.

"No one has asked me that yet," the princess slowly says.

Because no one believes her.

"I just asked you," Ursa calmly says.

"I drowned myself because…" Because she wanted to escape, because she didn't want to go back to what she was before, because she was lost and fucked up and she was weak, and she just wanted it all to go away, she wanted to quit at life because it got too hard. "Because of _you_. Because you drove me to suicide."

Azula wishes she were more satisfied with that answer.


	9. The Bereaved

**Chapter Nine:** The Bereaved

* * *

Azula studies the ceramic figurines adorning her mother's shelves.

They are quite beautiful, intricate. Most are painted in red, but there are a few that have touches and hints of blue on them. It is odd; Azula imagines the figurines are from the Fire Nation. They look to be from Ember Island, along with the faux seashells that fill the space between them.

One of her hands rests on her bandaged wound as she leans against the wall to get a better look at them. This place is well-decorated; she will give her mother that.

Maybe it is not. Azula is confused about her surroundings most of the time. This life, this world, it feels so real that it is surreal.

She jumps and nearly knocks over one of the figurines when someone touches her shoulder.

"I had this idea," says Ty Lee. She sounds so sweet, as if she did not stab Azula. "Meet me outside."

"So you can murder me?" Azula should not be so blunt, but she could not stop the words in time.

Ty Lee smiles. "Yes, absolutely."

"You sound too cute to be properly sarcastic."

"Oh, I'm not being sarcastic." Ty Lee deviously raises her eyebrows, and then she vanishes down the hallway.

Azula stares at the statues and contemplates what she should do. Is it worth it? Does she even care if she dies or not?

She has never been more confused.

[X]

Azula finds Ty Lee by the ocean. Her alleged wife is barefoot and standing in the water.

"I decided to come," Azula declares. Ty Lee turns around and smiles at her.

"I have to show you something. You, well, you've been there before but I bet you don't remember it," Ty Lee says, extending a hand. Azula does not take it. "I want to do this with you because grief is…"

"You're grieving my memory loss?" Azula scoffs. She is certain Ty Lee is up to _something_ by suddenly trying to be romantic and sweet.

Ty Lee does not perk up, and that intrigues the princess.

"Something like that," Ty Lee whispers. She rescinds her hand and starts walking towards the thick wilderness surrounding the beautiful house. The isles around Ember Island always have been so strange. Azula remembers them enough.

"What were you going to say about grief?" Azula asks, shoving branches away from her face.

Ty Lee blushes, then sighs. "I was going to say that grief is really lonely. I've noticed that you're really mad at me and I was mad at you, but then I realized that being mad at you was stupid and I should show you what we have—had—so you could see."

"I have nothing to mourn."

"You don't miss being sixteen?"

"I am sixteen," Azula says.

"Yeah." Ty Lee shrugs.

Azula grabs her wrist, risking being punched again by this bitch, but she kisses her on the lips fiercely. Ty Lee very gently pulls away.

And Azula knows just what to say. There was a tactical reason for locking lips.

"We're middle-aged and we're teenagers kissing on a beach all at once. It is remarkable," Azula purrs. _Smooth_ , she thinks to herself. If Ty Lee wants to play house with her, Azula will play house until she burns their quaint marriage to ashes.

Ty Lee looks so _skeptical_. Azula does not know how she is going to get around this obstacle, and it is frustrating enough to be seducing the person who certainly stabbed her.

"It is," Ty Lee says, and she sounds somewhat serious.

"You have always been so hard to read," Azula continues, toying with Ty Lee's fingers. "I guess that might be why I was infatuated with you. Not knowing what you are thinking…"

"Stop. Will you follow me still?" Ty Lee insists.

Azula clenches and unclenches her fist.

They arrive at their destination and Azula cannot help but find it beautiful. She _wants_ so desperately to hate every bit of this world, but the crystalline pool in front of her is very tempting. Everything has a little beauty in the right light, even this prison.

"Why?" Azula asks.

"You don't really like spending time with your mother." Ty Lee smiles faintly. "So we found this place."

"I doubt I can swim with this awful wound." Azula looks Ty Lee directly in the eyes but does not find any answers.

"Let me check on it," Ty Lee offers, reaching forward. Azula grabs her wrist to stop her.

"I am doing this as a favor to you. Remember that," coldly says the princess.

Ty Lee nods, although she looks slightly angry.

"I'll swim. You can decide if you do," Ty Lee offers. She begins taking off her clothes.

This world really does have the right light hitting it upon occasion. It is as awkward as always, but Azula sits on one of the large stones and watches Ty Lee carelessly jump in. She could almost pretend that they are like they were in the time Azula traveled from.

Azula has a sudden realization; Ty Lee is trying to seduce her.

Ty Lee is trying to use their old, dead feelings in order to make Azula docile and cooperative.

Well, the princess may as well exploit the person trying to exploit her.

"You're a surprisingly good swimmer," Azula purrs. It is not a good enough compliment. She is… slightly flustered. Slightly. "Let me start that over. You are truly privileged to look so good without clothes on."

There. Much better compliment.

Ty Lee swims. She talks too much about everything and none of it is helpful. Azula listens for any information she can use, but it is the same drivel Ty Lee has always gone on about.

Maybe Azula's fake sweet talk had a kernel of truth. They _are_ in their thirties and sixteen at the same time, and perhaps that _is_ remarkable.

 _"What are you grieving?"_ Azula asks more than once, and gets a different answer each time.

After a long or short while, "Are you sure you don't want to come in?" Ty Lee asks as she comes up to the surface.

 _So you can drown me?_ Azula thinks, but she says, "I don't want that potential filth on my body or rotting my stab wound."

"Let me see that." Ty Lee stands up and walks to Azula, reaching at her.

The princess begins to recoil or attack, but she decides to allow Ty Lee to remove the bandages. It is… it is not an open wound anymore, certainly. The scabs have almost healed, but there certainly will be a scar. Azula looks away from it and rolls her eyes. So much for that excuse.

Ty Lee stands silently before her eyes light up.

"Azula, Azula look at that!" she exclaims, jumping into the water. "Come on! Look, look, right here!"

Well, Azula is too curious to resist. She stands and looks into the water. Azula sees nothing; Ty Lee grabs her by the wrist and pulls her into the cold sapphire water.

Azula begins to swim up to the surface, but then she feels the bitter shock. Something comes over her as she recalls how it felt to be drowning. She tried to drown herself, and here she is sinking, sinking, away from the moonlight. Her lungs will fill with water.

She feels her body as it should be.

She dreamed this world.

Why does she feel so afraid of that thought? She hates where she was. She wants to go back to her life… or her death.

It was not a bad dream, she supposes.

Her head becomes fuzzy.

Then she suddenly bursts to the surface. Ty Lee has pulled her up and she takes a deep breath.

"What was _that_?" Ty Lee demands, her eyes wide. She is pretending to be worried and she seems very good at making it seem realistic, Azula knows. "You can swim, you know?"

"I do. I was just a little startled by being pulled in here against my will," Azula snarls, she reaches through the water to drown this horrid traitor and she is met by hands gently on her wrists.

"Please give this a chance," Ty Lee asks.

Azula gets out of the water.

"No. I want to go home. This _future_ disgusts me," Azula snaps through chattering teeth.

She leaves Ty Lee naked in a cold pond and does not bother to look back even once.

[X]

Azula does not speak to her alleged wife after that night.

She at last sits on a ship on her way home. Zuko watches her, because no one trusts her for a second. It is _more_ evidence that this life is a ruse.

He is telling her about her work, and asking her to try coming back to it for a while. Zuko says it might make her _acclimate_ better.

"So, _I_ write _your_ speeches?" Azula asks yet again.

Zuko looks up at her. "Most great politicians have people ghostwrite speeches for them."

Azula cackles. "I've never just intentionally fucked one up?"

"No, you haven't," Zuko replies, an eyebrow cocked.

Princess Azula shakes her head.

"I don't believe you. Just imagine it. You have no clue it's bad, everyone either loves you or fears you too much to say anything about it, and then when you actually give it, all you receive instead of applause is that disappointed look of a father who has given up all hope on his son."

"You _will_ give this a try, because you're not leaving this place any time soon and I know you're smart enough to know that. You _will_ catch up on current political events, because I don't think punching you in the face will bring your memories back," Zuko coldly says.

Azula has no idea what suddenly made him think he could speak to people that way.

"It could. You haven't tried," Azula taunts, a smirk slipping onto her face.

"Would you like me to?" Zuko grunts. He ruffles his hair and rubs his neck.

Azula leans forward. "Yes."

"I'm not going to punch a girl in the face," Zuko barks.

She did not know he could puff himself up like that. How _cute_.

"It could bring my memories back." Azula gestures at her face and Zuko glowers.

"Yeah, I have a feeling that won't be your story when asked about the facial wounds."

That somewhat stuns Azula. "Are you saying I would be punched in the face to somehow sabotage your happiness? Because that is just egotistical and absurd."

"No," Zuko says. He looks earnest about that, but she no longer cares. She wants him to suffer for addressing her like that.

"You remind me of someone I used to know," Azula purrs, leaning back again.

"Yeah?"

"Our father." Azula watches his face flush as red as his scar. "I've noticed I grew up a lot like him, when I look at my little alleged family but I truly see him in you as you age and speak to me as he spoke to everyone."

"Stop trying to fuck with my head," Zuko says. He is trying to be calm, but Azula does not buy it.

"Oh, I am not. I mean that," Azula semi-truthfully says.

Zuko exhales sharply and leaves the ship cabin.

[X]

Azula has been back home at the palace for one day; the sea salt is still in her hair. And her daughter already is making this life even more difficult. _One day_.

For the entirety of _one day_ , Azusami follows her mother around. She asks too many questions, most of them about why she no longer sleeps in Ty Lee's bed or even speaks to her.

Azula does not know what to make of the child being so _attached_ to her. She does not know what could possibly be good about that, because Azula hates the future version of herself. Most of that is because this Azula is docile and everything the real Azula hates. But there is another chilling reality; this Azula is worse than Ozai to her family.

This world cannot be real, because how could she live with herself being like that?

It prompts Azula to make an effort with Azusami. She has a feeling that this little girl has never had a mother who understands what it is like to be disappointed and hurt again and again by a man she loves unconditionally.

Azula still loves Ozai, and she hates him too.

She hopes Azusami is as naïve as Azula was when she was that age. That would be a reassurance that she has not traumatized her children yet. That means she can avoid it, at least until she escapes, of course. She would not stay here for the world.

Everyone says she should appreciate her second chance, but this is not a second chance, it is a second trap, a second punishment, a second nightmare.

Why does she not speak to Ty Lee? Because she clearly tried to seduce her in order to make her cooperative.

It confirms her suspicion that they all are hiding something, and Azula just wishes she could figure out what it is

* * *

 _ **A/N:**_ _A question in regard to this fic and all my fics in general; do y'all like shorter chapters updated much more often or longer chapters updated more rarely as I have been doing it? Thank you for reading and I hope you're enjoying the show._


	10. The Birthday

**Chapter Ten:** The Birthday

* * *

"Cartwheels are dangerous. Don't do them in here," orders Ty Lee. She can be quite fierce with her alleged children, Azula has noticed.

"No cartwheels? But you were slightly good at them when you were young," Azula says, smirking at Ty Lee.

Ty Lee rolls her eyes and returns the attention to the little girl who has already done two more cartwheels. When Ty Lee gives her a look that almost even frightens Azula, Azusami stops and scowls. Princess Azula finds that very cute, but she keeps it to herself.

Azula inquires, "So, why are you discouraging cartwheels?"

Ty Lee instantly replies, "This palace is a deathtrap."

Azula glances up at the weapons mounted on the walls. She gazes at the parts of the walls that peel and crumble ever-so-slightly, no matter how much Zuko cleans. The dark dust of the formidable fortress lingers like a curse.

"I can understand that," Azula admits.

Silence.

"Azusami's birthday is tomorrow," Ty Lee says. "She's _yours_ , if you know what I mean."

Azula scoffs. She cannot believe this joke. Zuko or spirits or herself should have been able to come up with something more plausible than this situation.

"You are not telling me I gave _birth_ to a child years ago. I cannot have done that. That does not make _any_ sense," Azula says. She means every word of that statement.

Ty Lee groans. Azula does not care.

"Azula, you have _amnesia_. You just don't remember giving birth to her. I know it's probably hard to grasp, but at least play along."

"She probably isn't even mine. She's yours, or father's or even uncle's. I wouldn't have a baby because I have always only been interested in women."

"Well, it's kind of a funny story."

"I would love to hear it." Azula leans forward; she desperately wants to know.

"No, you really wouldn't."

"Yes, I would. Tell me right now. That is an ord—"

Before Azula can force a story out of Ty Lee, they are interrupted by Zuko.

"Put your daughter to sleep." He stares directly at Azula. "She demands you, Azula."

"I doubt that she is my daughter, but I suppose I did not play pretend enough with you when we were children. It's such a simple thing to make up for."

Azula brushes past Zuko to go be a parenting prodigy.

[X]

"Are you still afraid of the dark?" Azula asks, striding into Azusami's room.

She runs her hand over the candles and they burn blue before settling. Azula turns to face the girl she bound to the bed with flawlessly tight silk sheets.

"No. I've never been afraid of the dark. You're afraid of the dark," Azusami viciously says, and Azula wants to snarl something about to respect to her alleged daughter but she keeps her mouth shut. "Tell me why you're all worried. You've never been worried before."

"I am not worried; I am curious about how you were raised, about the kind of mother I am," Azula says, walking to Azusami. "I have been told I am similar your grandfather."

"No, because he's a bad man and you're sometimes a good woman," Azusami articulately says and Azula smirks.

"Only sometimes," Azula says, sitting down at the foot of Azusami's bed. "He was only sometimes a good man too."

"He burned Uncle Zuko and he always makes momma so mad at you. You're wrong," Azusami haughtily insists. Azula did not know a child could be that level of condescending.

"Do you know him?" Azula snarls.

"No." Azusami sinks back towards the mattress.

"Then do not make assumptions about who he was," Azula says. She sees him before Sozin's Comet, before her quest that ended with a suicide, on that beautiful island where he claimed to help her escape or expose Zuko. Those images should make her angry, but, instead, she feels wistful. She quietly admits, "I still love him."

"What made him sometimes good?" Azusami demands, sitting up and ruining the blankets that Azula had fixed moments ago.

Azula does not want to do this, but she does.

"Shortly after Zuko was banished, my father became harsher. But he wasn't entirely lost to me. One time, he took me away from the palace because I begged and pleaded and did well in my training. I wanted his attention beyond being a weapon.

"He took me out to the mountains solely to watch falling stars. They were bright white and shot across the sky before disappearing. I still remember how cold my feet were but how I didn't want to look weak in front of my father so I didn't put my shoes back on.

"There were so many of those stars. I couldn't follow them all even with my incredibly sharp eyes. The importance of that night went beyond just how beautiful the sky was. My father has never been open, you see. Never. But as we watched those stars and talked about everything and nothing, he told me that the only thing he feared in the world was losing me," Azula says softly. She can barely talk near the end, because her nose tingles and she knows she will cry if she does not control herself.

Azusami intently listens to every word and remains silent after her alleged mother finishes speaking.

"You took me to see falling stars once," the little girl says and Azula sits up, instantly gifting the child with more of her attention. "You never said your dad took you to 'em."

Azula does not know what to think about it.

"Do I talk about him often?" Azula inquires, tilting her head to the side.

"No. You never do," Azusami confidently replies.

"To answer your question; he is not a bad man. He was cruel and selfish, but so am I. He robbed me of my childhood in order to turn me into a weapon of war, but he was my father, and he was the only person who ever cared about me."

"I care about you," Azusami blithely says, reaching up to touch her alleged mother. Her arms move and Azula does not know what the child is doing until Azusami hugs her. Azula freezes in place, uncertain what to do.

Azusami finally pulls away.

"I appreciate the sentiment," Azula replies. Only to be a polite and regal, of course. She knows that she does not care back, even if Azusami's smile makes something twist inside of her. "I believe I have been about as good of a parent as he was."

"He was good then," a clueless child states.

Azula sees too much of herself in Azusami.

"Of course." Azula stands and snuffs out the candles.

She wordlessly leaves.

[X]

"Mother," shouts Kazumi, "come draw with me!"

The little one wraps her hand around Azula's wrist. Azula had been watching the fiasco that is Ty Lee and a number of servants preparing for a lavish party. Azula finds it odd that there is so much stress over the birthday of a _toddler_.

"I am occupied, Kazumi," Azula coldly says. Kazumi tugs on her. And then she tugs on her again.

"Busy with what?" Kazumi slurs. Her words are almost impossible to understand, but Azula manages.

Azula sighs. "I will draw with you."

She has a simple motive; Kazumi is too young to sustain a complex lie that others made up. Maybe she will let slip something useful that Azula can use.

Azula follows her out of the ballroom. Kazumi leads her into the playroom that once belonged to Azula and Zuko. The memories feel uncomfortable and Azula wishes she were not here. None of this world makes sense to her. There is something _off_ about this life, but she cannot quite place a finger on it.

The playroom has not changed significantly over how many years it has been in this world. It should be six, but Azula knows it has been over a decade.

"Do you always play in here?" Azula asks, glancing around.

"Mhm. 'sami goes outside," Kazumi replies as she fumbles with paints. They have already stained the floor that Azula remembers so well.

Azula wants to question her further, but she turns around and begins thumbing through the dry paintings that have already been painted. Kazumi's name graces every single one, the characters as messy as could be. It makes her think of the pictures she found in her bedroom. The ones in Azula and Ty Lee's room were in the terrifying shape of the Visitant.

These paintings are much happier than any Azula made. The young Princess Azula drew herself as a conqueror with more blood red than sky blue surrounding herself.

Azula comes across something that sticks out.

"Who's this?" Azula asks, turning and pointing at a painting of Zuko, Mai, Izumi, Ty Lee, Azula, Azusami and Kazumi herself. They have three pets or animals that Azula has never seen around the palace. But it is the girl so close in portrayal to Kazumi holding her hand that makes Azula wonder.

"Oh, oh, her." Kazumi lifts her dripping fingers from the parchment in front of her. "She looks like me because she likes mirrors."

"Is she real?" Azula softly asks. Maybe Kazumi really is her child. Maybe she passes on something in blood that she does not want to think aout.

"No," Kazumi says. "She only comes around at night and monsters aren't real."

Azula wonders how on Earth you tell a child that monsters do exist. And that they tend to win no matter what flag flies or ruler reigns. She feels cold, because these crude pictures are closer to Azula's drawings of the Visitant than she wants to think about.

No one else sees the… Azula saw… she was how old? Nine? Ten? Around that age, a bit older than the small girl who still crawls instead of walks half of the time. Azula thought it was a nightmare and nothing more. Her father brushed it off as lingering memories of her mother when she told him about it. That was one of the only times he spoke of his lost wife.

"Does she have a name?" Azula manages to inquire.

"Not really."

"What does she look like?"

"Almost just like me. I said she likes mirrors," Kazumi carelessly slurs. She seems so calm about something that truly terrifies Princess Azula the Conqueror.

Azula pretends to be unfazed and kneels beside Kazumi with a paintbrush inside.

[X]

"So," Azula says as she unties her hair, halfway through ready to go to sleep. Ty Lee sits on the bed, "this party should be interesting. Do you think we'll have a huge fight? Maybe I'll burn down the decorations because I am _so_ awful."

"Don't start this again," Ty Lee says.

"I will start whatever I want. I am the victim here. I am trapped and I do not know how to escape. You have not made my imprisonment any more bearable."

"I've tried to," Ty Lee softly replies. Azula wishes Ty Lee would be louder, angrier.

"It does not change the fact that you are simmering with hatred and anger. Towards me and me alone," Azula snarls with fire in her eyes and her feet in a fighting stance.

"I'm not angry at you," Ty Lee says quietly. "I'm just tired of this situation. I wish it wasn't this way, because you don't know how much I've done for you. You're so much better off in this world with me and with your children. I stayed up with you when you had nightmares, and I'd kiss you if you were crying, and I tolerated all of the insanity and I was there for you every second."

Azula shakes her head. "I do not believe I would need that much help, and I believe that you are too selfish to put me before you."

"I miss our life. I don't like this one. I want to go to another one, another one that doesn't make it so hard to be optimistic. It's never going to be the same because you don't remember how I held your hand, or how our wedding was, or our every single break-up, or when you had Azusami, and when… Just everything."

Tears drip from Ty Lee's eyes, but she does not seem to notice that she weeps.

Azula does not care. She says, "You now must understand why I hate it here. I did miss everything and if it were real, if all of that did happen, it means nothing to me. I am who I am and that will not change for you."

Ty Lee clenches her fists. Azula steadies herself for a violent clash.

"I do. I don't think anybody is happy with your situation. I hate the fact that you're here and I can see you and you look like the person I loved for years but you're not. I'm alone now," Ty Lee says, unclenching her fists.

"How unfortunate for you." Azula reluctantly slides her feet out of their position. "I am not saying that the time I come from is perfect, but it makes sense. I remember every second of it. I think I am a worse person now than I was then. I no longer have an excuse for what I have done to my family, just like my father. I am just like him."

"This could be a second chance. You could fix what you've done. You could start over." Ty Lee's eyes light up like stars. It is clear that she wants that more than anything else in the world.

Azula thinks that could be incredibly easy to exploit. Ty Lee should not have revealed how weak she is when it comes to Azula's situation. "I have no desire to do that. I want to get out of this place. There must be some way out."

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I just can't love you no matter how hard I try to. I'm not a teenage girl having her first love. I have so much more to think about than who has kissable lips or says the prettiest words."

"You didn't always love me?" Azula tries to sound cold, but she cannot.

"I did. I do. But I don't know what to do anymore. I… we erased everything we had, and starting over is something I won't do alone."

"We have exactly one thing in common."

"Yeah?"

Azula picks at her lips and tries to force herself to say the words on her mind. She fails thrice before she says, "I'm alone now too. I'm trapped in a world that I don't belong in, a world that I am facing alone."

Ty Lee whispers, "We could be alone together."

Azula stares at her feet. She does not want to have this conversation; she does not want to accept Ty Lee. But…

"Yes. Let's be alone together." Azula feels drawn to her worst enemy like a butterfly-moth to a flame. She will burn up if she gives in, but Azula has enough control over herself and others to slip up once in a while.

Ty Lee stands and steps forward, very cautiously, and kisses Azula on the lips. She kisses her again, three times. It is loud but neither woman cares. Ty Lee takes Azula by the waist and they fall and fumble to the floor.

Azula kisses her. "Being alone together seems to have some interesting perks."

"Don't talk," Ty Lee says, and her lips collide with Azula's before the princess can remind Ty Lee that she cannot speak to royalty in that manner.

Ty Lee sits up and starts to take off her shirt, but she stops when Azula stops and sits near her. That is as far as they both want to go.

And there is nothing wrong with that, Azula decides.

[X]

Princess Azula has not been to a birthday party like this since she was Azusami's age. It is chaotic, overwhelming, and altogether terrible. She sits and watches the party rise and fall like the waves of the ocean. Thinking of that, she realizes that there are far too many Water Tribe people here.

Like Katara. Like the girl who destroyed everything almost singlehandedly. But Azula hopes she can leave this place soon, and so she keeps focusing on her eventual escape, and then she would not have to pretend to like these people who are as monstrous as she is.

Ty Lee sits beside her with Kazumi on her lap. The little girl looks half-asleep; Ty Lee looks like she has not slept in days. This is marvelously needless for a child's party.

"You need to stop being on the sidelines. Meeting these people again might bring back more of your memories," Ty Lee sweetly suggests. Azula glares at her.

"I think you do not give me enough credit for what I already I am doing," Azula purrs, deciding that a fight with Ty Lee is absolutely worth not having to associate with any of the people.

Ty Lee stares blankly. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that I have played along; I have not sought the vengeance that would be extremely easy for me to claim. I have thought about it constantly, but I have not abused the ridiculous amount of trust you traitors have in me," Azula says, shrugging and leaning back in her seat. She knows that she has all the power in this situation, and it feels fantastic.

"I don't think you get credit for being a decent human being," Ty Lee huffily snaps.

She is far less sweet and malleable than she was last night. Azula has no idea why.

"You destroyed my life and I drowned myself because of you. I would love to blame my mother – and she deserves it – but it all started when you told me that _you weren't sure_ ," Azula says, her voice imbibed with artificial innocence.

"I wasn't sure. I was fourteen and not a love genius. I'm still not one now. Don't tell me you really knew for sure or something." Ty Lee hugs Kazumi tightly to her chest. The little girl does not even stir.

"I would not have given you a fleeting second of my time or a drop of my affection if I did not find it necessary," Azula coldly says.

Ty Lee is wide-eyed and without words.

Good.

Finally, Ty Lee collects herself. "I'm not sorry for what I did. Or at least not anymore. I apologized for this way too many times and I don't care if you don't remember. I stopped being sorry when you abandoned me while I was miserable and scared and knocked up."

Azula cocks an eyebrow. "It's not like I did that to you. It wasn't _my_ baby."

"I guess some of you never changed," Ty Lee whispers. She thinks she has said that before, but to a… to a different Azula.

Ty Lee's frown fades but her smile does not return.

"Azusami looks happy," Azula remarks, removing her attention from Ty Lee. She assures herself that she does not care at all. Azula does admit she would love to hear the story of that incident.

"She is. Do you like seeing her that way?" Ty Lee asks. Her smile creeps back onto her face.

"I am impartial," Azula lies.

She does like seeing that little girl so joyous. It means Azula – real or not – is less of a failed parent than she presumed.

Ty Lee says, "I think you should accept this world, and this second chance."

"No," Azula vehemently replies. She calms herself down with two deep breaths. "At least not until I know if it's real or not."

"So never?" Ty Lee asks. Her eyes glimmer in the lamplight and Azula does all she can to not look into them.

Azula gazes at Azusami instead. Her gaze follows the girl running around with cake on her face and friends surrounding her. Azula looks at her hands and sees they are more weathered. She sees no shackles. She sees two rings on her left hand. They are slightly tarnished. It has been a long time for Ty Lee, but it has been less than a month for Azula.

Finally, Azula faces Ty Lee and answers the question.

"Never."


	11. The Nightmare

**Chapter Eleven:** The Nightmare

* * *

The sunset burns ice cold in the sky.

Azula stands on a beach and does not know how she got there. When she looks around, she sees a white fallen tree that rests on top of the sand. Her eyes follow it and she sees her alleged wife. But she is different.

"Can you start the fire?" Ty Lee asks and Azula opens her mouth to deny it but the words do not come out.

She waves her hand and rips flame from the air itself. The campfire bursts bright blue at first and then settles, dim and smoky. It does not light the beach up very much.

"Anything else?" Azula icily asks.

"No," Ty Lee replies. Her bright eyes fixate on the flames. "It's just nice being here with you."

"How cute," Azula says. Slowly, a revelation dawns on her; she was last at the birthday party of her alleged child, not by the sea. "How did we get here?"

Ty Lee turns to her, and goes up in flames that illuminate the entire ocean.

Azula wakes up sweating. Her nightdress is soaked and cold.

She glances around at her surroundings and finds something to be… _off_. She lights her palm to looked around and sees something that alarms her. Her hands are different. Not as she remembers them in her real life, and also not as they were in her second life.

Azula gets up and does not even bother changing her clothes before entering the hallway. Who would get it? Who can explain this?

The palace feels eerie in the dead of the night as she seeks out the one person who obeys her.

"Ty Lee!" she calls out into the shadows. "Ty Lee!"

"Ty Lee ran away two days ago," says Zuko's voice from behind her.

"Wh-what?" Azula blinks several times fast.

"You didn't know that?" Zuko looks puzzled. He also looks younger.

Azula examines her hands again and swallows. If these people do not think she has amnesia, she has a chance of keeping her cluelessness secret.

"I assumed she would have returned by now," Azula purrs, managing to adopt an air of confidence. He clearly buys it, and nods. "I think I need to lie down now."

Zuko looks uneasy, as if she may pounce at any moment. Azula likes that; it is how he regarded her in the _real_ world. Or what feels like the real world. She does not know where she was when she went to sleep, and she does not know where she is now.

Princess Azula of the Fire Nation drowned alone in the Forgetful Valley.

Whoever she is…

She does not want to know.

[X]

In the chilly morning, the sun is the same. It floods her veins with the familiar feeling that has always been. Even in this new nightmare, the sun and moon are eternal and unchanging.

She wonders how long she will have to endure this limbo. She wonders if she ever will return to the life she had. She wonders if she is dead and this will go on forever and ever.

Azula sits up and combs her hair with her fingers. Her nails slightly snag on the tangled locks. She takes a few deep breaths and prepares herself to embark on this journey. To explore this life and perhaps figure out how to escape it.

Maybe it is better than the one she formerly inhabited.

The first thing she does is locate the nearest mirror. She has plenty of them, including in this weird world. She gazes at herself and sees someone somewhat more familiar. This life is younger, perhaps a few years earlier. There are no marks on her skin; she likely does not have two children.

As she ties her robe back together, she thinks about the opalescent scars on the body of her alleged wife.

This future is fucked up. All of this is fucked up. There are no other words for it.

[X]

Azula thinks of the drawings of the Visitant. They looked like hers. Perhaps that world was her imagination; that adds up when she thinks about it. All the same, she does not think she will like it here either. The frigid bottom of that lake still seems appetizing.

When she walks into the shared rooms of the palace living quarters, her brother looks simply stunned by her presence. Azula must hide what is in her head. That has never been impossible.

"You're out of your room," he says, furrowing his brow.

"Stop looking at me like that," Azula snaps. "I do not like to be analyzed."

Zuko blinks a few times and leans back. He does listen to her, thankfully.

"I know," he says, cracking his knuckles. Azula studies him and tries to figure out where she stands in his eyes.

Azula licks her lips as she tries to come up with the right words. She _needs_ to find out the state of this world without giving anything away.

"So, now that I am out of my room, what exactly do you want?" Azula asks. She hopes she sounds like herself. Is this herself? The situation confuses her too much for her to know.

Zuko rubs his face. When he stretches his scar beneath his hand, it shifts and turns a lighter pink with streaks of red, like a poisoned scratch.

"Nothing really. I haven't spoken to you in a few days, but I don't think either of us really wants to catch up," Zuko says.

Oh, he makes this too easy.

Azula walks to him and kneels to be at eye level.

"What if I want to… catch up?" she asks, dropping down all the way to the floor with her legs crossed.

"I don't know. It's always pretty much the same. I deal with frustrating people all day and your girlfriend runs off to where you can't catch her. We both don't get enough sunlight. Is there anything else?" Zuko sighs.

Azula smirks. "No. I think you have summed it up fine. I have no desire to seem weak, but what day is it? I never can keep track."

He tells her.

She thinks she can find a way to comprehend this place.

[X]

"Do you like your nightmare?" asks a small girl.

The princess sits in her bedroom, brushing her hair at an agonizingly slow pace. She was alone until the dear Visitant showed up. Azula at first thinks of Azusami, but then she recalls that Azusami is probably not real, and this embodiment of the Visitant is herself.

"Yes," Azula confidently replies. "I love it."

The Visitant laughs, a discordant noise that gives Azula chills.

"You really are still a prisoner, aren't you? Nobody will ever let you be free. It was probably better to drown, what, seven or eight years ago?" The Visitant smirks and Azula knows the face too well. It always makes her uneasy, even if she does not show it.

"If you know so much, tell me about this place," Azula purrs, turning to face her fear.

"You're engaged to a girl whose life you destroyed. Your brother keeps trying to help you but you don't need to be helped. This life is less jarring; don't you think? You know exactly what has happened and what will happen here. You know that. At least people are open about you being imprisoned," calmly says the Visitant. Their eyes meet. The shades of gold differ ever-so-slightly.

"I do like to see the bars as much as I can. It makes things easier," Azula admits. She plays along with the hallucination. This _is_ a nightmare, and Azula does not see an easy way out.

No one will wake her up, and so she plays along.

"Do you think she'll return to you in the next five minutes. Yes or no," says the shadow.

Azula scoffs. "Am I supposed to answer that?" Silence. "Fine, yes. Yes, I think she will."

Princess Azula does not believe that, but after a few heartbeats, someone knocks on the door. The thuds are soft but persistent, and when she turns, the vivid hallucination has vanished into thin air.

She opens the door and sees Ty Lee.

"I'm sorry," hastily says the acrobat. "I need to apologize probably."

"I don't even remember what we fought about." Azula comes close to laughing. It is true, but Ty Lee just sees it as a barbed comment. This was more fun than Azula thought it would be.

"I just needed somebody to blame it on. I was really… invested, I guess. It's not your fault. I don't think it's my fault either, but maybe you think it is, I don't know," Ty Lee whispers.

Perhaps Ty Lee truly _did_ do something wrong. Azula has no idea.

"I am going for a walk in the courtyard." Azula leaves before she can make a fool of herself.

Ty Lee sits down and watches her leave, her eyes brimming with hurt.

[X]

Azula walks through the courtyard and the vines of the flowers twist and tangle like they are alive. Is she really in a nightmare? Why are they doing that? Was her tea drugged?

They brush against her and she feels nothing. She backs away from the garden and goes to sit beside one of the crystalline fountains. The stone fixtures had fallen into disrepair when Azula last was here, but Zuko must have restored them. He would do that.

The water looks as if it has a strong currant. It froths and overflows and she does not feel wet. She sees fish that she does not think exist.

Azula stands up and decides to go back inside, but someone blocks her way.

She has no idea of Ty Lee is real or not. That is a feeling she has gotten used to ever since the Visitant proved that she could certainly take that form.

Maybe the courtyard is all in her head.

"I came to check on you. You weren't feeling really good when I walked out on you," Ty Lee says softly. She approaches the princess and Azula steps back. Ty Lee recoils into herself.

Agni, this becomes more and more frustrating as time goes by.

Why does this woman not understand that what she did at the Boiling Rock is not forgivable?

"I have no idea why you pretend to care about my wellbeing," Azula bitterly says, glaring. Ty Lee looks intimidated and it feels satisfying. "You betrayed me and, while everyone else seems to think you're too cute to punish, I disagree. You won't get that from me, even if you get it from everyone else."

Ty Lee looks exactly as she did at Sozin Memorial Meadow, when they broke out into a fight about the Boiling Rock. Azula wonders if they have had this fight before, or if this Azula truly _did_ give Ty Lee the forgiveness she does not deserve.

"I've done so much." Ty Lee says no more than that.

"You have no done enough." Azula walks away.

Visions of swimming in the jungle flash in Azula's mind. Visions of scars never leave her alone. Visions of everything Ty Lee did to try to win Azula back rush by like a blur.

But this world is different, and nothing Ty Lee did over the past weeks can matter here.

[X]

The sunset burns ice cold in the sky.

Azula stands on a beach and does not know how she got there. When she looks around, she sees a white fallen tree that rests on top of the sand. Her eyes follow it and she sees her alleged wife. But she is different.

"Can you start the fire?" Ty Lee asks and Azula opens her mouth to deny it but the words do not come out.

She waves her hand and rips flame from the air itself. The campfire bursts bright blue at first and then settles, dim and smoky. It does not light the beach up very much.

"Anything else?" Azula icily asks.

"No," Ty Lee replies. Her bright eyes fixate on the flames. "It's just nice being here with you."

"How cute," Azula says. Slowly, a revelation dawns on her. "How did we get here?"

Ty Lee turns to her, and goes up in flames that illuminate the entire ocean.

Azula wakes up sweating. Her nightdress is soaked and cold.

"Hey, hey," says a voice Azula instantly recognizes. "Hey."

"So help me, Ty Lee, if you poke me again I will murder you," Azula hisses, sitting up. She catches a glimpse of her alleged wife, then gazes at her hands. "I need to throw up now."

When Azula reaches the bathroom, she catches a glimpse of herself. She has not woken in the world she knew; it is not the morning after Azusami's birthday. Princess Azula is _elsewhere_ , wherever that is.

While her stomach convulses and she retches and her throat burns, Azula comes to a conclusion. She washes out her mouth and walks into the bedroom where Ty Lee sits.

Proclaiming her plan does not perturb Azula in the slightest.

"I need to leave," she declares. She tries to find a bag, figure out what to pack. Azula has no clue where she will go or what she will do, but she has to do _something_.

"I need to come with you," Ty Lee insists, grabbing Azula's wrist.

When Azula quickly pulls away, Ty Lee flinches.

Azula thinks she needs to throw up again.

"Why would you want to? You are better off, believe me," says Azula, wondering if she will wound history by doing this. Maybe she does not care. It does not matter if those two children never exist, right?

"I just don't want you to be alone," whispers Ty Lee. "I promised you that once."

"I do not remember that promise, but I do know that you have never bothered upholding it before. If I am not a prisoner, as you claim, I should be able to leave."

"Where will you go? How long? This is against the law. If you get caught escaped then… Please don't get sent to jail again. Where? When? How?" whispers Ty Lee, tears blossoming in her big eyes.

Azula calmly answers, "I do not know where, but I will return when I feel better."

Ty Lee stands silently for a moment before she makes a pained noise.

"When _you_ feel better?" she exclaims. "I am so sick of you—of you—of you only caring about you. You have never once wanted me to feel better!"

Azula feels a rush of complicated emotions. She forces them away before they can possess her.

"No, I have not, and I have no intentions of starting now."

Despite her words, opalescent scars glisten in Azula's memory, and it makes her chest hurt.


	12. The Rage

**Chapter Twelve:** The Rage

* * *

Azula makes it past the courtyard before she turns around. The torrential downpour has not made running away any easier than it already was. She does not _want_ to go anywhere when she so desperately craves answers. The world will always wait for her, so long as she stays in these strange traps, but her mind has fixated on Ty Lee and Zuko and her fate.

Soaked, Azula steps inside of the door and decides to take a bath.

Ty Lee is nowhere to be found, and Azula feels quite content with that fact right now.

[X]

Minutes later, Servants draw Azula a bath. She stands and waits, poking at a drink she intends to sip as she soaks.

"I want the water to be volcanic," Azula carelessly orders, gazing at the small deep pool. "Make sure of that."

Princess Azula knows that she can heat it however she likes, but she takes great pleasure in ordering people around. Her confusion and disorientation has made her feel lost and lonely; she needs to ground herself somehow. Ty Lee was her one hope for information, and apparently Ty Lee has run away and may or may not come back. She also lacks the two children who offered at least _some_ clues.

Azula does not know who she is in this world.

A cute serving girl interrupts her panicked thoughts. "This is honey and egg white and oil and some lavender and—"

"And I don't care. What does it do, exactly?"

"It soothes your mind and your hair and skin will be perfect."

"I have very high standards. I do hope it lives up to my idea of perfect."

"I know you do, princess."

The low class cute brunette talks like she _knows_ Azula, and that makes the princess uneasy.

"And why do you act like I care about you on a personal level?" Azula coldly demands, picking up her drink and setting it beside the bath.

A smile spreads across the girl's face. "Just reasons."

 _We've slept with each other_ , Azula realizes. The young woman is very pretty; Azula does not blame herself.

"Of course," Azula purrs, turning to the steaming water. "I would like to be alone. I can take it from here."

The girl who seems to know Azula pours the bowl of perfumed oil into the water. It bubbles up to the surface. Azula has been left alone before she can bark a single order. The door shuts and Azula strips and enters the water. It burns for a fast flicker of a second, but then her skin remembers its element.

Azula lies down. She floats slightly in the water and the oil makes it too slick to easily stay in one place. But as soon as she grounds herself, she closes her eyes.

A memory strikes her. That would not be odd while isolated and relaxed, if it were not for the fact that it never happened to her. She remembers flashes of days that never occurred in all of her sixteen years.

She tries to focus on them, reining in any facts she can get her hands on.

 _Azula sits on the edge of a hot spring in Sozin National Park. When she looks to her right, she sees Ty Lee beside her. Both of them have their legs submerged in the comforting heat._

 _"_ _I don't think a day in the woods is going to fix enough of our issues to justify getting married," Azula icily says, digging her fingernails into the warm, damp dirt. Ty Lee frowns. "I have no idea why you even want us to go down that path. It is not one I think we can follow."_

 _"_ _I want to be with you forever and ever and I want to know that I'm more than just a friend like you told that girl I was," Ty Lee says, trying to lock eyes with Azula. The princess, however, cannot manage to do it._

 _"_ _Maybe I was not lying that day," Azula coldly says. The Fire Princess is cooler than the wind against her wet knees._

 _They sit in silence for the longest time._

 _Ty Lee softly and cautiously inquires, "Do you love me?"_

 _"_ _I thought I loved you," Azula says, staring at the ripples in the water. They captivate her attention more than Ty Lee ever could._

 _"_ _If you think you love someone," Ty Lee says, walking her fingers to the back of Azula's hand, "you love them. That's what love is: thoughts."_

 _Azula almost loses her composure. Those words hurt in a way that she cannot fathom. "Well, my thoughts are not to be trusted. I know that much. I'm insane, remember?"_

 _Laughing, Ty Lee replies, "So am I. I wouldn't be with you if I wasn't just as crazy."_

 _Ty Lee leans in and kisses Azula fiercely on the lips, forcefully pressing her hand down on Azula's. The princess accepts the flood of warmth and the soft touch._

 _Azula would daresay that they have a chance together. She lifts her legs from the water and wraps them around her girlfriend._

The alien memory ends and the princess opens her eyes. When did that happen? Princess Azula has no idea. She does not have much time to think about it, however, because when Azula looks up she sees a mirror image of herself, but wrapped in blue cloth. Her skin is smooth, her eyes bright, her body a replica of the current Azula, not the real one. The princess imagined her dear Visitant would take the form of a sixteen-year-old.

"What brought you back here?" purrs the Visitant, touching one of her toes to the water. Azula slips back, trying to get away without breaking eye contact. "Do you love her? Do you want answers? No, I don't think you _want_ them; I think you _need_ them. Who will give them to you?"

Princess Azula opens her mouth to reply, but her own hallucination grabs her by the neck and pushes her underneath the water. The soap stings her tongue and she barely stops herself from breathing in liquid. She suddenly remembers throwing herself into the water, ready to die, ready to kill herself. She was sinking and sinking and sinking until the sunlight faded away and the darkness consumed her.

Azula sits straight up, gasping and choking. She is drenched, but her vision is gone.

"Hi. I guess you decided to stay," says Ty Lee, stepping inside of the large, ornate room. Azula turns to her, concealing her panic. "I kind of expected you to come home. You always do. I always do too. We never make it very far away from each other when we leave."

"And why is that? We've cheated on each other and lied and fought violently and betrayed each other to the core more than once. Why would we not run to opposite sides of the Earth? I wouldn't blame you and I wouldn't blame myself."

Ty Lee smiles for some reason. "We stay because we love each other deeply."

Azula laughs and sits up. She grabs Ty Lee's arm to steady herself and gets up. She begins to get dressed as she scathingly says, "You mean we love each other blindly. Deep love would encourage us to fix our flaws for each other; blind love encourages us to ignore them."

"Then I guess we love each other blindly, which sucks because we're both so super pretty," Ty Lee remarks as Azula finishes clothing herself.

Ty Lee turns around and sits on her knees as Azula stands on the other side of the room. Their posture could not be more distant, and could not display more a power discrepancy.

"Why are you so resistant?" Ty Lee whispers and Azula wonders if she should explain the spirit switch, or the amnesia lie.

However, she decides she can be honest about reality without disclosing the state of her mind. She knows that her motivations are the same at sixteen as they are at whatever this age is.

"You sacrificed anything we could _ever_ have when you gutted me and chose someone else," Azula says and Ty Lee looks confused. "Oh, have you somehow forgotten about the Boiling Rock? Have I not mentioned that enough? I can start reminding you every day if you would like."

"Azula…" Ty Lee whispers. "How could I possibly make up for something that you're obsessed with? It doesn't matter what I do if that's all you can think about, and it…"

Ty Lee trails off because she becomes _smart_. Azula could _end_ her with no regrets, and she ought to keep that in mind.

"Allow me to explain why I might be _obsessed_ with that." Azula pauses to think, and enjoys making Ty Lee sweat. "Betrayal has such a tight grip on the mind. It's… like a python-gecko. It can squeeze out all other thoughts and suffocate all other emotions until everything is dead except for the rage."

"Do you feel that rage?" Ty Lee whispers, standing up with her head bowed.

"Yes," Azula says, closing her eyes. When she opens them, Ty Lee is walking towards her. She shifts her feet and Ty Lee freezes in place. "Yes, I do. Whenever I look at you I do, and you cannot change that, no matter what you do."

"We weren't perfect before then either," Ty Lee openly admits, and Azula must agree. "You're perfect but we're not the kind of perfect relationship I always thought I'd have."

"Maybe you should find someone else then," Azula bitterly says, turning away. She does not want to have to look at this woman anymore. Azula does not know how they ended up together, and she does not know how they possibly did. This world makes no sense to her.

Ty Lee touches her wrist, then softly runs her fingers up Azula's arm. The princess remains cold and statuesque until Ty Lee reaches her neck. She fluidly turns in and their lips meet.

Azula falls back and realizes that perhaps this will genuinely happen for once.

She will not be babied because of amnesia when no one knows that she has it.

Even though her day has been a nightmare, her night is a daydream.

[X]

In the bright morning, Azula wakes to an animal jumping on her left leg. She leaps up and her room flashes bright blue before a small child blocks her blow. That is mildly impressive. It is less impressive when she sees that it is _her_ alleged child.

She stares at Azusami for what feels like an eternity. When did she get here? This is not where—or rather _when_ —she went to sleep. Azula slowly looks at her hands and sees the distinct, chilling change.

"What's wrong?" asks Azusami, sitting down on her knees. Her wide golden eyes focus on her alleged mother.

"Nothing," Azula lies, hoping her daughter believes it. Children are famously gullible, or so she has heard. "Did I teach you how to block like that?"

"Yeah," chirps Azusami, kneading at the blankets like a cat. Azula watches that, confused for a number of reasons.

"Let's go practice firebending," Azula hastily orders, hopping out of bed. She needs to focus on something she understands, something stable, something as constant as the sunrise.

Azusami giddily follows her outside.

[X]

"Show me dragon stance," orders Azula and Azusami thinks for several moments, then changes her position. " _No_! That's mountain stance. I said dragon—that's tiger-monkey stance. How can you possibly be my—?"

"Azula," interrupts Ty Lee out of nowhere, "you could be nicer."

"I could," Azula purrs, pivoting to face her alleged wife, "but I won't."

Azusami grimaces.

"Can I talk to you for a minute, Azula?" Ty Lee asks, tightening her grip around a cup of hot tea. Azula sees it steaming from several feet away.

"Azusami, practice your breathing. It seems to be the only thing you can do on your own." Azula flashes a glare at her alleged daughter. Emphasis on _alleged_ now that she has seen her bending.

Azula breaks away from the colossal mess called firebending practice and follows Ty Lee beneath the red wooden canopy on the edge of the courtyard. Ty Lee touches Azula's hand and Azula allows it. Blind love, blind love, blind love. Azula believes that one thing about these strange traps.

"You know about my… amnesia." Azula has been tiring of playing along, but she does it anyway. "I need to ask you if something happened."

"Anything." Ty Lee looks nervous.

"Did I ever walk out in the rain for about five minutes, come home and get in the bath, and we talked about blind love, and the Boiling Rock, and then slept together?" Azula whispers.

Ty Lee blinks, her lips parting from surprise. "Yes. That was kind of insignificant, but I remember it. I've never been able to get over how you said you wanted to make sure you felt better, without thinking about me."

"I remember that," says Azula, her voice and fingers trembling. "I think I remember that, at least. Maybe I remember living it."

Ty Lee gives Azula a peck on the cheek, and the princess accepts despite her alleged wife's rude statement about Azula's selfishness.

"I…" Ty Lee trails off, looking sad. "I hope you remember more."

Azula slightly steps back.

She can clearly see that Ty Lee is lying.


	13. The Answer

**Chapter Thirteen:** The Answer

* * *

The taste of the elaborate tea brings Azula back. To exactly _when_ , she does not know, but she does know she must have been happy last time she drank it, because her lips twitch with the first genuine smile she has felt in ages. It is a drink that she has never had—as far as she knows—but it makes her chest swell with the strong sensation of peace and nostalgia.

Maybe it just had some secret ingredient slipped into the spiced red oolong. She would not put it past her brother. Or anyone around her these days, for that matter.

They are incredibly difficult to trust. Azula does not know what to make of her current circumstances, but she saw Ty Lee's face when she asked about that memory. Everyone could be in on the conspiracy to keep her in the dark.

Azula is only certain about one thing; she has been right all along about who is most likely to cave in and tell her the truth. Ty Lee.

She sits across from her alleged wife, sipping the tea and watching Ty Lee.

"Have you put any thought into the memory I told you about?" asks Azula, cocking an eyebrow. She feels more like royalty now than she has in a long time, probably because Ty Lee shakes so much and avoids eye contact.

"Not much. I'm just glad you remembered it." Ty Lee flashes a nervous smile. "It's good for you to remember things because it makes putting you back together so much easier."

"When is it you fell in love with me enough to have the patience for my amnesia?" Azula asks, setting down her drink. Ty Lee jumps when the cup hits the table.

Ty Lee answers, perhaps avoiding a valid response, "I remember the first time I saw you. You were just as scary then as you are now, and you had such amazing gold eyes, more gold than your crown. Before you started being my friend, I would just watch you a lot. I'd look at you a lot."

"I was a princess," Azula says, shrugging.

Ty Lee shakes her head and clarifies, "You were interesting, and you were perfect in every single way. I still think you're perfect, even though you're..."

Azula frowns. "I have seen those scars. I _know_ that I am not perfect, and I _know_ that you cannot possibly believe that."

"But I do." Ty Lee shows no signs of deception, which makes Azula feel sick. "I love you."

"Fine. Since you _love_ me, I will have you know that I am tired of trying to be stealthy about this," says Azula. "Tell me everything. Tell me why you are so concerned that I remembered something from our past."

Ty Lee sits before her, looking guilty. Azula _knows_ she can squeeze a confession out of her alleged wife if she tries hard enough.

"Azula, you…" Ty Lee blinks back tears for some reason. "You _wanted_ to forget."

Harshly, Azula demands, "Explain."

Ty Lee exhales softly. She says with a begrudging look in her sparkly brown eyes, "You went to that doctor for an experiment procedure. It mostly worked. You were supposed to forget everything but instead you kept some of your memories."

"Why would I _ever_ give myself amnesia?" Azula snarls, standing up so fiercely that her tea topples off the table and shatters on the stone floor.

Ty Lee remains stolid for a few moments.

"Please trust yourself enough to keep that part forgotten," Ty Lee whispers, now with tears rolling down her cheeks.

Azula does not know what to say, and, in shock, she leaves the room without pressing for further answers.

[X]

The night is quiet. Too quiet. Azula swears she can hear the stars burning and crackling in the sky and the rustling of every single blade of grass.

Ty Lee breaks the eerie silence when she walks inside.

"Please don't tell anyone that I told you," Ty Lee pleads, shutting the door and bowing her head, her eyes closed. Azula sees genuine shame on her pretty face. "They really won't be happy with me."

"Who's _they_?" Azula asks, sitting up. Her head spins; she has been lying down in the same position for hours.

"Just Zuko and Mai. They're the only ones who know about what you did. When everything went wrong and you still remembered stuff, the three of us promised to keep you in the dark. I hate breaking promises but I couldn't… I don't want you to ever feel pain. I'm just so in love with you, Azula, please…" Ty Lee clearly means every word. Azula averts her eyes, trying to think. This whole situation is difficult to mentally grasp.

"Fine." Azula rolls her shoulders. "There is not much I can do, I suppose. I know I am still a prisoner here and I probably always have been."

"No, you did so well. You changed so much."

"Ty Lee."

"You _did_. Cruelty isn't a personality trait; it's a habit. Your Uncle says that, I guess. I never understood it too much but I think…" Ty Lee shakes her head.

"I am obviously a very cruel person, and I do not think I have ever been anything otherwise. Supposing you did tell me the truth," says Azula, "I want to call this an opportunity to change my life. This is not one I like and it is not one you _should_ like."

"I don't know if sixteen-year-old Azula is the best person to rearrange the life of—"

"No, no, I think sixteen-year-old Azula offers a fresh and thrilling perspective." Golden eyes bore into the acrobat, watching her squirm under the scrutiny. She manages to look away. "I think that, even if you are lying or it is a trick or I am dreaming, I am going to be stuck here for a while. I might as well make myself _comfortable_ , don't you think?"

Azula stands and walks to her alleged wife.

"I guess," Ty Lee whispers, her fear palpable.

Softly, Azula kisses her on the lips. "See, that part of this miserable situation is not half bad."

"I guess," Ty Lee whispers, her fingers trembling.

Azula takes one step back.

"I think I shall get to work starting tomorrow morning. I look forward to making myself an ideal life to live." Azula smirks at the tantalizing idea and walks back to bed.

Ty Lee lingers in the shadows for a long time before she joins her.


	14. The Reawakening

**Chapter Fourteen:** The Reawakening

* * *

Azula wakes up in the morning and stares at the sunlight pouring through the window. She thinks about the brash decision she made without much thought. Her idea of making this life into one she wants instead of trying to escape it may be good, but she does not know if she can proceed without knowing what she wanted to erase from her memories.

She turns over on her side and looks at Ty Lee. The relationship has become bearable. Azula always did wonder if they could have had a future together.

Azula sits up and shoves Ty Lee's shoulder. Her alleged— _her wife_ —sits up.

"Huh?" Ty Lee asks, rubbing her eyes.

"What did I want to forget?" Azula whispers, taking Ty Lee's face in her hand and forcing her to make eye contact. "What could hurt so much that I would be willing to give up everything I am?"

Ty Lee says, "Maybe you should trust yourself. I think you made the right decision."

Azula mirthlessly laughs, to Ty Lee's visible dismay. "Future-Me is a terrible person and I do not trust her as far as I could throw her."

Ty Lee smiles a clearly fake smile. Azula clenches her jaw. "Past-You is also kind of a terrible person who nobody should ever trust."

Azula sits up straighter, bristling. "I have to admit that I might not want to remember what I went to such lengths to forget. And…" Pause. "And I must admit this life is better than where I was at last I recall."

"Maybe give it some more time," Ty Lee suggests, giving that same smile again. Azula feels her blood boiling. "Then you can make a better decision."

"But what if I made a mistake by erasing that memory?" hisses Azula, her eyes flashing and nostrils flaring.

Ty Lee sounds more serious and severe than she ever has. "You didn't. If you don't trust yourself please trust me."

Azula sits up. She looks Ty Lee directly into the eyes and watches her simper. The princess has always been used to having a strong effect on people, but she did not anticipate the power of just one look. Ty Lee _did_ leave her control so recently that the wounds of the Boiling Rock are fresh. Every moment they live as a married couple pours more and more salt into it. She thinks that brand of betrayal will never fully heal.

"Ty Lee, tell me the truth. Tell me the truth and I promise we can figure out the next step from there," Azula says, knowing the use of _we_ will push Ty Lee over the edge.

It does work.

"I think the amnesia is better than your first attempt at erasing it," Ty Lee says. Emotion has already flooded her voice and she has barely spoken. "You…" She hesitates. "Azusami always wants to wear a braid like me but she never lets me do it for her. She always wants you to do it. Isn't that funny? She has a really sensitive head, I guess, and mine is numb as a rock so I must pull too hard when I do it. It's funny since you're so much harsher than me."

"What does this have to do with anything?" snaps Azula, no longer caring about her alleged w— _her wife's_ —clear pain and misery.

"It has to do with what I'm…" Pause. "It's difficult to say."

"Continue," Azula orders. Ty Lee has never disobeyed one so direct as that.

Ty Lee softly sighs and smoothly says, "I remember the day before all of this went out of hand. So clearly. I forget so many days and when I start talking about it like this I wish I could remember them all. Maybe they all are just as pretty as the one I cling to so much."

"So, you're telling me you want me to be able to remember everything?" Azula inquires.

"No, the opposite. I'm telling you about the day that made me _sure_ that you erasing your memories was better than your first choice." Ty Lee takes Azula's hands in hers. Azula tears herself away, her nail accidentally nicking the side of Ty Lee's face. She begins to murmur an apology but changes her mind.

"I have no idea what could possibly be that bad," Azula sternly says, locking eyes with the acrobat.

Ty Lee takes several deep breaths and hastily says. "So, it was the middle of summer and we were at home. It was so ridiculously hot and my skin was so dry that no lotion could save it. But that's not important, I guess. We woke up together with Azusami curled up right between us, kicking us both halfway off of the bed. Kazumi hadn't started crying yet so we thought we could actually sleep if we snuck Azusami out. Azusami woke up while we were carrying her down the hall and that made Kazumi start screaming and crying from her room.

"I look at you all the time. I look and see how pretty you and when we were younger I could just _stare_ at you and notice more and more pretty things all the time. I remember how pretty you were even so tired in the morning with this lethal gleam in your eyes that threatened anyone who would try to talk to you. Your hair was really shiny even though it was so dry that summer. You have a little mark on your nose that would be called an imperfection but I call it a relief because you're already too perfect to be real.

"Azusami begged for you to do her hair and you actually did, which I thought was the nicest thing you'd done in forever. I really couldn't stop laughing while I watched at how she changed her mind about halfway through and you used that _Terrifying-Fire-Lord_ voice to stop her from trying to attack you and run to hide somewhere in the palace. It was super funny.

"I knew I was supposed to be mad at you about something but I couldn't really remember what. Azusami whined and I promised her we would go get cinnamon ice and you wouldn't come with us because you were depressed and so I took her."

Azula thinks Ty Lee pauses because she has run out of things to say. "Yeah? And this matters because…?"

"I kept trying to remember why I was supposed to be mad at you. The whole time I was out with Azusami. That's all I was thinking about all day. And you would just take yourself away from me and that was so selfish but I still feel like I should've done something to stop it. You keep talking about drowning in the Forgetful Valley twelve years ago, but maybe you just _forget_ almost _drowning_ yourself a few months ago."

Ty Lee begins to cry, then begins to run away. She lingers long enough for Azula to realize she wants Azula to pull her back, but the princess makes no such gesture.

[X]

In the late morning, Azula sits down. Kazumi curls up behind her like a cat. The princess has become used to that, strangely enough. Her daughter is fast asleep. When she is supposed to take a snap, she screams and howls and finds any way to get out of it. When she is simply on her own, she passes out asleep.

Ty Lee walks in and Azula turns her attention from the floor to her wife.

"I know I am stuck here, and I have to make the most of it. Maybe this future could use a few changes in your opinion too. But I still cannot fathom it. Why would I get rid of everything I am?" Azula asks, digging her fingers into the cushion beneath her.

"Please don't make me go through it again." Ty Lee wipes her eyes.

"Was it because I attempted suicide?" Azula bluntly asks, cocking an eyebrow.

"No. I told you that was your first try to get rid of the memories so I'm not giving them back to you so that you can get so upset and miserable and scary again!" Ty Lee's eyes burn with a fiery rage that makes Azula reluctant to question her.

"Maybe Zuko will be more forthcoming," she states, crossing her arms. She means it.

When she stands up, Ty Lee touches her arm to make her stop. It works.

Ty Lee shakily says, "Azusami has a bending tournament today. It's not exciting since it's just children and kids aren't like really good at bending except maybe a few kids like you, I guess, but maybe you could watch it."

Azula glares. "Give me a good reason to do that instead of investigate my amnesia."

"Because…" Ty Lee smiles. This one is real, but hesitant. "I think the best thing you can do is say that you'll give redemption a shot with this second chance. I don't… I don't want to be the one to tell you, but maybe if you show Zuko that you want to try with this life he'll talk to you about it."

"You are smarter than you look." Azula kisses Ty Lee. The jolt of electricity feels familiar, but Ty Lee's reluctance has been newfound since Azula woke up after drowning.

With that in mind, Azula steps back and says, "But you must promise me that you will work at making this life bearable for me too."

"Of course." Ty Lee grins.

Azula hopes she can trust her.

[X]

At the bending gym—one Azula does not recognize because she was better trained—Azusami bounces up and down, thrilled by Azula's very simple decision. Azula does not understand the feeling inside of her, a simmering of happiness and maybe a blossoming of pride. Her daughter has not proven to be _excellent_ at firebending yet, but Azula decides she will be supportive.

She pats Azusami on the head, then presses down to keep her from jumping.

"Good luck," says Azula, glancing over her shoulder to see Ty Lee on the verge of swooning.

As they sit on the fringes of the room, close enough to see but far enough away to not be collateral damage, Azula turns to Ty Lee. She stares at her, formulating the words belatedly.

"What is it?" asks Ty Lee, her eyelashes fluttering. The faint outline of a smile has not left her lips since they arrived at the gym.

"Do I not go to these often?" Azula asks, not bothering to watch the first two pathetic children throwing weak flames each other's' way. They both have two heads on Azusami and must be at least a year older than her.

"You've never been to one," responds Ty Lee. Azula cocks an eyebrow. "See, this is what I mean about getting your second chance. You can make up for the mistakes in your old life and fix the ones you have in this one. Maybe that's why you got this second chance. I know you're just doing it to make yourself comfy here when you hate the idea of leaving the past behind, but maybe it's meant to be."

Azula scowls. "I have made no mistakes in the past sixteen years I recall. I have merely suffered from the failings of my father and Zuko."

"Maybe," whispers Ty Lee.

"But I will admit that I think this life is screwed up. I have become my father and even when I admired him above all else, I never wanted to treat my children as means to an ends like he always did. I never wanted to be cruel and harsh to try to get what I wanted. And I guess I just thought I would be better at this than I am." Pause. "I've seen the scars on you and an honorable conqueror like myself would never do such a thing."

Ty Lee silently begins to cry. Azula has no idea what to make of that.

"See what I mean?" she whispers. "See what I mean?"

"I refuse to change for you," Azula purrs. "However, I have come to terms with the fact that I am stuck here and should make adjustments as I see fit."

Ty Lee leans over and kisses Azula.

It might mean something; it might not. Azula still is on the fence about the feelings. The physicality of the relationship she could not be more pleased about, but the emotions are too complicated.

Azusami is up. Azula turns her attention away from her wife and to her daughter.

Her kid has potential.

She _does_ win the tournament.

[X]

Azusami throws her arms around Azula. The sweat on Azula's clothes makes her want to gag, but she does let the child finish her embrace.

"Did I do good? Did I do good enough?" Azusami asks, wide eyes sparkling with hope.

Azula licks her lips and replies, "Yes. You could use a few lessons from someone better than this idiots, but by their standards you could not have done better." Azula turns to Ty Lee once Azusami releases her. "This one is mine, correct?"

Ty Lee nods.

Azusami whispers, "Do you love me?"

"Probably," Azula replies. Her little girl looks crushed, but Azula does not know anything else she could say.

Azusami raises her hand and frantically gestures for Azula to hold it.

The princess stares at Ty Lee for assistance. Ty Lee reaches forward and grabs onto Azusami as they walk out of the gym door.

[X]

Azula locates Zuko and sits down across from him.

"You asked to meet with me?" he inquires in a professional, Fire Lord tone.

Princess Azula is glad she decided to do this over a table and not in the throne room. She wants to pick fights with him when he acts superior to her. The blow of his expression is lessened when they are at the same level physically.

"I have made my decision on my course of action," Azula crisply says, "and I am being honest when I say so. I have come to realize that this may be a second chance for me. Maybe there is a reason the last thing I remember is throwing my life away because I had no future. I apparently did have one, and I suppose I should take advantage of it."

"These sound like terms of an agreement," slowly says Zuko, drawing out each word as if to give himself more time to think.

"They are. If you tell me _everything_ about why I volunteered to erase all of my memories, I will dedicate myself to this very unconventional form of rehabilitation. If you continue withholding information, you might as well cuff me and throw me in the Boiling Rock because I will make your life miserable if you do not lock me up fast enough."

Zuko glances around the room, looking for someone to take up the mantel. None of them do.

He avoids looking at Azula when he says, "I guess we have to start at the beginning then…"

"Yes?" Azula demands after giving him a few moments to continue. She has no clue why he keeps _stalling_. Why everyone does!

"Kazumi is a twin," he says and Azula can already tell this will be bad. She has goosebumps and he has only said four words. "You were a mess. You go in and out. It's kind of a cycle. A year or so of you being fine and lucid and, I guess the you that you were meant to be, then a half a year to a year of you being a… for lack of better phrasing, a crazy mess."

"And?"

"And you were a crazy mess a year and a half ago," he says, and Azula blanches. She knows she cannot hide the apprehension. "I don't have to say more."

"Yes," Azula fiercely states. "Yes, you do."

"You didn't do anything directly and everyone knows that—knew that—but you. When you were a… a mess, you were supposed to be watching her and—"

"I don't want to know anymore."

"We're almost at the end."

"I said I don't want to know anymore." Azula runs from the situation.

She runs and runs and runs.

Azula ends up somewhere in the middle of the courtyard, the sunset shimmering pink and orange. It reflects in the water below her. It is then that she realizes she is on a bridge above a shallow pool. She slowly sits down and stares between the weathered stone bars of the bridge.

It has been a long time since she has cried.

She does not even know this kid or this life or this person she apparently is now but she cannot stop the flood of tears.

How can she fix a life as fucked up as this?

What did she do to deserve to be placed here?

Azula never thought she was a bad enough person to warrant such cruel punishment.


	15. The Truth

**Chapter Fifteen:** The Truth

* * *

At sunset, Azula finally stands up on the courtyard bridge and wipes away her tears. She knows she has been out here for a long time but is not hurt that no one came to check on her. They all were wise to know that she needed to be alone.

Azula takes a few deep breaths and walks back inside. To her great displeasure, she finds an entire gang waiting for her. Zuko, Maai and Ty Lee all block her path to any hiding place, seated with tea. None of the cups have steam; the heat has already leeched out of them all by the time the princess reappeared. They all—

"You all _knew_! You all _knew_ but you look at me and act like nothing happened! Did everyone else know too? Everyone else you paraded me in front of!" Azula shrieks. Ty Lee cringes, while Mai and Zuko do not react.

After a beat, Zuko looks to the women. Their stance and expressions do not move. Azula's brother takes a deep breath before saying a barely audible, "Yes."

Azula's fingers smoke like those of an uncontrollable novice firebender. She cannot help it.

"And our parents?" Azula demands.

Zuko speaks louder this time. "Yes."

Azula manages to stifle the sparks that begin to fly from her fingertips.

"Well, mother certainly is a better liar than I gave her credit for and father—and father—he seemed _pleased_ by it." Azula cannot help but be aghast.

"You didn't do anything wrong," Ty Lee vehemently insists with her hand over her heart. Azula grits her teeth.

"Yes, yes I did. I have fucked up like some pathetic excuse for a human being over and over again. I cannot believe the woman I became. It seems like an absurd cautionary tale!" She did not intend to spill her guts, but she cannot control the anger.

"You didn't kill her. It wasn't your fault," Ty Lee repeats, more viciously this time.

"It obviously was my fault if I wanted to erase my memories. I am worse than my mother," snarls Azula, focusing her intense gaze on her wife.

"What happened to starting over and mending this life? You can still do that. You don't have to inherit this pain," Ty Lee says.

Azula's heart begins to race. She finds her tongue and says, "I need to be alone."

She bolts past their blockade before they can stop her. She makes it to her room and sits down on her bed, burying her face in her hands to hold back the tears. On top of this, she does not need to be a _weakling_ too.

She suddenly understands a good deal about the one person she hates most and the one person who disappoints her time and time again, gradually growing her hatred. When she lost her mind, she lost her love for him. He did not want a daughter; he wanted a dynasty and never cared much that she admired him like no other. And her mother. Mother, mother, mother.

The revelation she has at this moment makes her shiver. She _despises_ that it seeped into her head, but she cannot stop it.

It must have crushed that woman. All of it. Crushed her to be wed to a monster who made her give birth to another. Azula cannot help but think again of the scars on the _single_ person other than Ozai she ever loved. Then… leaving… and _moving on_. Moving on.

Sometimes, Azula realizes, things happen to people and they are not equipped to deal with them. Like Azula, for instance. Right now.

After milling over these dreadful thoughts, Azula rises and walks to draw her own bath. Volcanic, volcanic heat is the only thing that can calm her when she thinks she might just fly off the handle and try to kill herself again. The steam already cools her slightly. She adds a bag of dried flowers to the water, then lowers herself into it without even bothering to change.

She has never been so deeply distraught.

The dirt from the knees of her clothes cloud the water even beyond the red floral veil. It relives her; she does not care to look at the woman she became or will become, either way.

How does _anyone_ survive something like this?

[X]

Once Azula forces herself out of the bath and wrings out her sopping clothes, she comes across Ty Lee patiently awaiting her arrival. For the first time, Ty Lee looks at her like she is crazy. She never did that, unlike everyone else in the world. Azula clenches her fist so tightly that her nails draw blood.

"I said I wanted to be alone. What part of that did you not understand?" Azula harshly demands, but Ty Lee seems undeterred.

"The alone part," Ty Lee whispers. Her eyes glisten with tears. Azula's rage surges, the bath rendered useless. "I can't leave you. I just can't. I've stayed through all of the madness. All of it. I won't quit now."

Azula sits down on the floor. Her hair and clothes make a puddle around her almost instantly. She feels vulnerable when she looks up at Ty Lee. She has been before at a lower level than only three people. Azulon, Ozai, Zuko. Fire Lords, not peasant princesses.

"What do I do? What do you think I should do if you are so certain?" Azula forces herself to whisper.

"Just keep going. I don't think there's a lot of a choice," Ty Lee says, shrugging. Azula hates that carelessness. "Just wake up every morning and focus on just one day at a time."

"I cannot do that! I have to think ahead!" Azula snaps.

"Well, think ahead about making this life better. You've hated it from the beginning. Does this change that? Fix it." Ty Lee again sounds too cavalier for Azula's taste.

"Just fix it? Where does one even start?" Azula coldly orders, brushing her soaked hair out of her face.

"We did this before. You started your life over in the past, so why don't we start at the beginning? We start over from the first piece we ever put back together." Ty Lee somehow smiles. Azula will never understand that.

"What was that? I wiped out my memories, remember?" Azula says.

"You forgave people. I wanted you to forgive yourself but I didn't know if you ever would. You've always had a little trouble with that. Maybe this time you can," replies Ty Lee, but Azula doubts that.

"This time I am even more of a monster than the last! At least I liked the kind of monster I was then. I was the invincible and dangerous kind, not the disgusting kind," Azula hisses, clawing at the stone floor.

Ty Lee's face flushed. "Maybe, but please trust me just for a day or two."

"I cannot. I _do_ not. I _don't_ trust people," Azula states.

"I'm your exception," Ty Lee breathes, reaching forward and daring to touch Azula and pull her to her feet. The princess allows it, which might prove Ty Lee right. Ty Lee stands and they both linger silently across from each other.

Azula at last says, "Who did I forgive?"

"Zuko, your father, your mother, Aang… never Katara. But nobody asked for that," Ty Lee says, smiling.

"Good." Pause. "Good about the water peasant part, not the others. Zuko and my mother's actions are unforgivable and my father will think I am pathetic."

"You'd be surprised." Ty Lee presses her lips against Azula's.

When the kiss breaks, Azula whispers, "I doubt it."

[X]

Azula stands outside that night. She does not approve of being allowed to supervise children, but Azusami and Izumi wanted her to play with them. After what she did, she could not deny it.

"You fight worse than you smell!" shrieks Azusami.

"Nuh-uh!" protests Izumi.

"Uh- _huh_!" snaps back Azusami.

"Nuh-uh! I've—I've met lots of people better at fighting than you!"

"Yeah? Well, I've seen messenger hawks better at comebacks than _you_!"

Azula purses her lips. They remind her of herself and Zuko. Those memories convince her that she needs to get away from this place.

But where would she go? What would she do? How could she keep going without repairing everything?

The methods of putting the pieces together disgust her, but she knows she will do better this time. She will rewrite this story, edit this life. She has no other choice and already came to terms with that fact.

She strides forward and takes Azusami's hand right as she begins to swing a punch at her cousin. "No fighting," sighs Azula, guiding Azusami away. Her daughter still sticks her tongue out at Izumi.

This might as well be the beginning.

She never has had a better one.


	16. The Makers

**Chapter Sixteen:** The Makers

* * *

Azula paces in her room. Zuko ordered a reprise of the dinner Azula hosted on the first day of her true recovery and redemption. Ty Lee apparently forced her to dress up and Azula chose herself to go through with her plans. It worked then; Azula supposes it will work now.

However, she has conditions. She is _smart_ , after all.

"These people made me. They all made me what I am," Azula says, adjusting her ruby choker. "I need to turn their influence into ashes if I am to be reborn. The blood of my child is on their hands as much as mine and apparently only my forgiveness can wash it clean."

"That's the thing about it. If you keep putting so much energy into hating them for shaping who you are, you can never make yourself."

"I agree, but there is one little condition. When I forgive them," says Azula, turning to Ty Lee, "I want something in return."

Ty Lee finishes pinning up her braid and, smiling, asks, "What?"

With a severe expression, Azula turns to her.

"I want apologies tumbling from their lips like jewels."

[X]

Her relatives arrived quickly. Zuko must have explained the situation in the letters because they all look at her with pity in their eyes. Save for her father, of course. Azula does not think he can feel bad for another person, which they have in common.

Then Azula thinks about the scars on Ty Lee's skin and how they consistently penetrate her mind. Maybe she does not share that character trait with her father when it comes to the precious few she holds dear.

"Welcome," purrs Azula as she sees her guests waiting at the table. "I am flattered you all chose to attend my pity party."

Azula sits down across from the head of the table—across from Zuko—and Ty Lee hastily takes the empty seat to her right.

Iroh, of course, breaks the uncomfortable silence by saying, "I'm sure it will be fun."

Azula mirthlessly laughs.

"Oh, I am so sure." She smirks at her guests. Zuko cringes.

Servants serve the first course. The party remains in utter silence. Ty Lee squirms in her seat but Azula could not care less.

"Do you take this whole charade seriously?" asks Ozai of all people. "I have heard that you want to fix things. How much do you remember now? Did it all come back?"

"No. In every way I am as I was at sixteen, but now I know my child is dead because of me. It is a lot to lay on the shoulders of a teenager," Azula bitterly says, glowering at every guest.

Ozai narrows his eyes. Angry, protective. Azula has not seen that look since she was a little girl who scraped a knee firebending. He demands, "Does she sleep with you?"

"You have no right to ask that," Azula snaps, her cheeks flushing bright red.

He growls, "I have every right to worry about someone exploiting my child. I do not want someone in their thirties sleeping with my sixteen-year-old daughter. It would be quite sick of her."

"Again, you have no right to interfere," Azula icily breathes, clutching the table tightly.

"Maybe I am just trying to be a better parent like you are. The only difference is that I refrained from,"—He matches her coldness as he speaks, then pointedly turns to Zuko—"killing the runt of my litter."

Azula shrinks in her chair. He always could disarm her; he was the only one.

Ursa vehemently protests, "She didn't kill anyone."

Azula corrects her presumptuous mother. "I was a soldier. I directly killed many people and indirectly killed hundreds more by conquering Ba Sing Se. It would not surprise me if I added another to the list later on."

Ursa insists, suddenly the savior of the daughter she once despised. "She fell and got badly hurt. Children fall, even around completely sober and sane parents."

Azula blinks and asks in earnest curiosity, "Did she?"

"You don't remember, do you? Someone only told you about it," Ursa says, her empathy so genuine that Azula wants to vomit.

"I had to know why I destroyed my own memories. It took time and effort but I managed to convince someone to develop a conscience and tell me the truth. Zuko explained it all, but I couldn't hear the rest of the story after I figured out why I did it," Azula explains, losing herself in the story, in the facts, in all she does not remember of this fucked up life.

"We tried to stop you," says Ursa. Azula hates the honesty and hates the presumptuousness and hates that these people think they are still her loved ones. That they ever _were_ her loved ones.

Azula shoves her full plate away from herself and stands.

"We are done here. I desire honest apologies in return for my loving amnesty, not a joke like this dinner," Azula articulately snarls. She pivots on her heel and leaves the room, silk fabric billowing behind her as she abandons her own party.

They eat without her.

[X]

Azula sits in her room and listens to them _laugh_ , pouting like the teenager she still is. They should at least be _fighting_. Ozai is in attendance, for Agni's sake. Ozai! And Ursa! Together! In the same room! Zuko and Ty Lee and Mai and all of them should know better than to be happy while Azula is heartbroken.

Of all people, Iroh knocks on the door. Azula groans when she rises to open it.

"Do you want help?" he gently asks, behaving so _nobly_ as usual.

"I am not listening to any of your strange new ideas, Uncle," Azula snarls.

Iroh calmly says, "All new ideas are strange only until you try them on."

"You understand better than anyone else, don't you?"

"Yes. His death was my fault. I ordered him to fight that day." Iroh closes his eyes in a way Azula relates to. She knows he knows how she feels and he is the only one.

Funny.

Azula whispers, "How do you live with it?"

Iroh almost smiles. Azula sees it on his face even if he manages to stop himself. "I thought you didn't want any strange new ideas."

"I do not want to know about what you think would work for me. I want to know how you personally survive and go on knowing what you have done and what you have lost."

Iroh remains silent for an agonizing period of time. "Most of the time, I just don't know."

Azula shrugs. "At least it is an honest answer."

They sit there in silence for a thousand years until Azula rises and leaves.

[X]

Azula walks out into the gardens. Late at night, they look eerie. The moonlight illuminates the plants and statues like ink paintings. She shivers in the cold air and then sees her father waiting for her. Wonderful, another person to speak with and try to forgive.

"Walk with me. No one will mind," Ozai says as he emerges from the pathway through the plants and idols.

Azula sighs and complies. She follows him through the tangled mess of flora. It is in there that she remembers the last time they took a stroll through a garden. Azula has not thought about it much; her trip turned into something much more dramatic afterwards.

Thinking aloud, Azula says, "You were more honest with me than anyone else. I am stunned and impressed. You told me I gave myself amnesia and you told me they would lock up the girls if they could and you… you told me that I had to hear the news in the right way."

"People change, don't they?" Ozai asks, smirking.

"I am certain you did it for your own ends." Azula plucks a flower and tears it to pieces. "I am supposed to forgive you tonight. It is supposed to be the first step."

"The first step to a new you? We have done this before and it didn't change a thing. It convinced the Avatar and the courts to give you freedom and let you have a wife and a career but you never changed."

Azula says, "I can, if I want to."

"Oh, little princess, you will always be the same. Envious, manipulative, sadistic—"

Azula screams, causing the night creatures to loudly flee, "And who made me that way? Who raised me to be that way?"

Ozai sighs. "I did. I will embrace that, unlike you."

"I will too. I will embrace that you designed me to be those things and that perhaps I will never lose those qualities. But that is unimportant. I learned that this world is real and I am stuck in it, and I learned that I am not the dignified and divine princess I ought to be. I am changing those things," Azula states. "So, I will embrace the truth. I did not change and I am all of those things and I always have been. But as long as I want to wake up in this world over and over, I do not care."

He smirks. "That's what you want most."

"Yes, and I always get what I want, at all costs, even if that cost is forgiving you."

Azula walks back inside before he can fill her head with more poison.

[X]

When Azula returns to her room, she slips into the bathroom to wash her face. She needs sleep; she needs to forget for a little while and start again once the sun rises. But when she finishes with the golden wash basin and towels off her face, she looks up and sees a mirror image of herself standing behind her.

She does not dare turn around.

Hollowly, Azula says, "You again."

"Don't act so sad to see me. I'm the only person in this world who understands you," purrs the hallucination, batting her beautiful dark lush eyelashes. Azula is lost in gold irises for too much time.

The Visitant palms the side of her face and passionately kisses her. When she sinks her teeth into Azula's lower lip, it feels so real that terror surges through the princess's veins. But, when she touches her mouth with her fingertips, she discovers that the bite left no mark.

"You're so cute, how you try to move on. Do you really think you can change? Do you really _want_ to change?" she asks, whispering in Azula's ear.

"Of course I do. I hate the person I became and I want to change her. Living as her is dreadful, and so I have no choice."

"You have a choice," purrs the Visitant. "You can succeed where you failed before. Leave this life behind and never again struggle with the pain it causes you. I would help."

"I do not want that."

"You should've swam out to sea like I told you back on Ember Island and spared yourself all of this. It would've been a calm end."

"I thought that this world was _fake_ then, but this is real."

"Trust me more than you trust her. I am far more intelligent and precocious than that airhead you apparently married."

"I never said anything about Ty Lee."

"You _fell_ for her. That is the only reason you want to stay here in this life."

"Maybe I did. It is the children, though. I owe them. I really know that after seeing my parents again tonight. That is what I hate most about this self. She is too much like those who made her. Maybe that is why I never could forgive myself. I did not deserve forgiveness."

"You didn't care much for them, did you? Why should you now?"

"I need to make it up to them. I refuse to make them the way my family made me."

"Yes, you just kill them off. That works awfully well. It's less time consuming."

"Go away."

"Have I ever done that on command before?"

"Go away."

"No."

"Go away!" Azula spins around and sees Ty Lee, not the Visitant.

The real, flesh and blood human says, "I can, if you need me to."

"No," Azula says, shaking her head. "I am going for a walk."

She leaves the bedroom and heads down the corridor. Lo and behold, it takes her less than two minutes to run into her mother.

"I'm sorry your dinner ended that way," Ursa states, clearly missing the point of _why_ Azula left. She cannot honestly maintain that behavior. How is Azula supposed to forgive her?

"I thought it was a bad idea, anyway," says Azula. "You knew, when I met you back on my little family vacation. You knew when you met Kazumi that she had a twin once."

"I did, but I understand that you aren't to blame. You were made the way you are, and you never had a father figure to teach you how to father your children. He broke you by forcing you to commit war crimes and no one would blame you."

It first strikes Azula silent. She bites down on her lower lip and tries to fathom how Ursa could say that.

"You made me too, mother," she calmly, sweetly whispers. "You cannot wash your hands of me and pretend I am his fault alone."

Ursa walks forward towards her daughter. "I know I made you. I love you no matter who you are and what you do _because_ I made you."

"Shut up." Pause. "I…" Longer pause. "I understand what you did now. Not everything. I will never understand how you could argue with father about how much you hated me right in front of my face when I was little, but I understand why you ran away."

"I ran from the law."

"Your husband _was_ the law. You made sure of that that night. I do not believe I would ever do such a thing to the children I only just met a few weeks ago—much less known since birth—but things happen to people that they are not equipped to deal with. I am done punishing you for your choices."

"Thank you," Ursa says and Azula almost attacks her. But that would make her the kind of person she does not want to be anymore.

"Do not thank me," Azula coldly says as an alternative to violence. "I am doing it for myself. If I am to reshape this life into one I desire, I must get rid of that which holds me back. Lamenting over my lack of a mother is childish and pointless. I must get rid of little human hangs up like that if I am to be as divine as I wish to be."

"Still, thank you," whispers Ursa.

Azula stares at her some time before she walks away and paces the other corridors.

[X]

After sufficient time away, Azula slinks back to her bedroom and finds Ty Lee sleeping in bed. Azula closes the door and walks to her. She looks beautiful asleep. Azula softly traces patterns on Ty Lee's bare arm as her chest methodically rises and falls. To Azula, it is brief rapture.

But, as with all bliss, it ends.

Azula lies down in bed and closes her eyes.

Surprisingly, she easily falls asleep and enters another life. Well, the same one, but she is certainly trapped in another body, one that does not respond to her cues.

She screams and rages at Ty Lee. She shoves a weeping Azusami out of her way although she does not want to, grabs the arm of a small girl who looks very much like Kazumi and violently tosses her aside, despite trying to tell herself to stop. After the long, stormy walk, she ends up in the courtyard, taking deep, livid breaths.

Azula sinks, sobbing like a maniac. She tears at her hair and then tears at her arms. Her sharp nails leave long red marks on her ivory skin. Azula sobs and shudders.

She suddenly suspects what will come next when she hears a child crying out for her. Azula cannot stop herself. She wants to _scream_ at herself to change what happens. Wants to claw at her arms and force her head to turn, force her feet to move and prevent it. But she has no control; she is trapped in the body of a horrid woman.

"Momma!" cries a child so young that the word slurs and warbles coming from her lips.

She just lies down and screams, "Find someone else! Leave me alone!"

Princess Azula does not bother to control her rage. She screams into the nothingness of the gardens and her lips contort into a snarl. When she closes her eyes, she hears the thud from the stone staircase. Azula leaps up and runs, but she knows she will be too late.

When she reaches the patio in the courtyard, she sees a tiny little girl lying motionless on the ground, her head lying in a pool of her own blood.

Azula opens her eyes. The cold sweat drenching the blankets around her reminds her of where she is. That was a dream—that was a memory of the past—now she lies beside Ty Lee in her bedroom in this life of a monster.

Ty Lee wakes when Azula sits up.

"I see no point in redeeming the person I am in this life. There is too much wrong with her to even begin," Azula breathes.

"There is nothing wrong with _you_ ," Ty Lee urgently insists. "Things happened to you. A lot of things happened to you that you couldn't cope with. That's all."

"What do you want from me," Azula hisses.

Ty Lee _should_ say nothing, but Azula supposes she asked for the truth.

"I want a real marriage," says Ty Lee, faintly forcing a smile. Azula sees how fake it is.

So Azula asks, "And what if I'm just not ready for that?"

"Then I'll wait. We have a lifetime, don't we?"

[X]

Early in the morning, Azula walks outside into the chilly air stands where her daughter died. Her skin prickles with goosebumps from the cold and the pain. She sees the blood on the stones even though she knows someone scrubbed it away long ago.

After an eternity, someone walks up behind her with light, graceful footsteps. Ty Lee, of course. Azula does not need to turn around to know it is her alleged wife.

"What was her name?" Azula softly inquires, still staring at the stones.

Ty Lee softly says, "Itami."

"Itami," Azula whispers. She closes her eyes and nods.

Suddenly, Ty Lee seizes her arm. "Do you want to get out of here?"

"Yes," Azula says, not bothering to hide her relief.

Ty Lee slides her grip down to Azula's hand.

"Ember Island?"

"Ember Island. You and me and the children. No one else," Azula whispers.

"As you wish, my princess," Ty Lee says with a slight bow of respect.

She backs away and leaves Azula in the courtyard alone.

[X]

Ember Island is frozen in time, as it always has been.

The summer palace may be very different after a long time away (albeit the same as it was last time Azula stayed here), and Azula again sets her hand on the fresh paint. She knows she cannot cover up her flaws and cracks like Zuko did here, but she knows she can start again as a new person. The spirits gave her this chance and she shall take it.

Her daughters bounce around, excited to be near the sea.

"Do you want me to play with you?" Azula offers the girls.

Tears blossom in Ty Lee's eyes and Azula pretends not to notice. Kazumi wraps herself around her mother.

Azula orders, " _You_ need to stay out of the sun, but there is still sand in the shade. Azusami, don't you dare go out in that ocean alone. I think we should build a very elaborate palace of sand."

"Yay! Yay! Yay!" exclaim the very loud little girls.

Princess Azula knows their excitement stems from years of neglect.

It is easier to start with them.

They never hurt her the way everyone else did.

Azula abandons Ty Lee and goes outside to play with her children.

[X]

When Azula comes inside, soaked and sticky with sand, she walks to go clean herself, dropping the kids on Ty Lee to bathe. She played with them; Ty Lee might as well do the hard part.

Azula rinses herself off and examines herself in the mirror. She will look like this forever. Maybe she will never get used to this body, and she still hates looking at it. But Azula could learn to live with it.

"No, you can't," says a familiar voice. "You'll never accept this life. You hate waking up in it and you hate living it and you hate looking at the body of the monster you always knew you would become."

Azula sighs and stares down at the filthy wash basin. She feels the presence of the Visitant and forces herself to look up at the mirror. Princess Azula always has been able to see her ghost without a mirror, ever since she was a little girl, but it always becomes more apparent in reflections.

"There are merits. In my old life I would be dead or imprisoned," Azula snarls.

"Oh, they brainwashed you, didn't they? They made you _wuv_ them."

"I love none of them but the children and my wife. I will never trust them, but I think I trust her."

"Hm." The Visitant sets her hand on Azula's shoulder. "What's it like to fall in love for the first time? What's it like to love someone enough to force yourself to live a life you despise?"

"It is like dying a little every day. Maybe it is like being alive for the first time too. It is a sense of pained and disgusting bliss inside that I do not trust because I know someone else could take it away. That I had no control over myself when it came to her. When it comes to her. It destroyed me more than once. She… unmade me. They made me. She _unmade_ me. That means she is more powerful than I want a traitor to be."

"You are so poetic," purrs the Visitant. "You are so in love. Don't let Ty Lee have that power. She didn't hesitate to betray you and ruin your life. She _lied_ to you just like everyone else. Just because she had babies with a different you doesn't mean she deserves your affection."

"No. Maybe she does not deserve my affection, but she has it."

"You aren't imprisoned. Run. Run as fast as you can away from this life and build your own without these traitors and beasts surrounding you."

"I always thought you knew me better than anyone else. But you do not."

"Oh?"

"I am Princess Azula of the Fire Nation and I _never_ run from a fight."

The Visitant hums and vanishes for the time being.

Azula clutches the sides of the wash basin and begs the spirits never to let that ghost return.

[X]

That night she burns her skin with the kisses of a woman she always was attracted to.

They melt into each other as they tear their own hearts to pieces.

Azula does not think she will ever understand the perfection of sex.

[X]

In the morning, Azula lies in the sand, basking in the sunlight. Usually, she would be practicing or meditating. She just lies there like a silly girl on a quaint vacation.

Speak of silly girls on quaint vacations; Ty Lee lies down beside her.

They say nothing at first.

"We should get to work today. There are many things to change and we cannot waste time," Azula briskly says. "I came to this island to start my life again. You promised to assist me with your knowledge of how I recovered last time. I am relieved you are awake and we can begin working."

Ty Lee lazily sighs. "You have your whole life ahead of you to mend what's broken. Happy moments like these are few and far between. Maybe we should just enjoy this while we have it."

Azula closes her eyes and basks in the light of the sun. Ty Lee's warm hand gently touches her wrist and pulls her back to reality. Right now, she thinks she accepts this life. She enjoys being dragged into it again by the woman she sometimes hates but always loves.

"I would like that, Ty Lee," whispers Azula, her voice almost drowned out by the waves.

She keeps her eyes open long enough to see a radiant smile spread across her wife's face.

 **THE END**

* * *

 ** _A/N:_** _I don't really know what to say. I've loved writing this story. That's why I put off the very simple ending for so long. Thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed the show._


End file.
